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Corn Meal Pancakes

Cornmeal pancakes made with eggs, butter, sour milk, baking soda, cornmeal, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Corn Meal Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the melted butter.

  2. Add the thick sour milk and baking soda, stirring until combined.

  3. Gradually mix in the cornmeal, flour, and salt until smooth.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and pour in batter to form pancakes.

  2. Cook until bubbles form on the surface, then flip and cook until golden brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure to the pancakes as they set.
Thick sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that works with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Cornmeal
Gives the pancakes their coarse texture and corn flavor.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the pancakes hold together.

The step that matters

Cook until bubbles form, then flip. Bubbles forming on the surface show the batter has set enough to flip. Flipping too early tears the pancake, while waiting too long can dry it out and overbrown the bottom.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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