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Southern Griddle Cakes

A cornmeal batter with sour milk, baking soda, eggs, and salt cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Southern Griddle Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the corn meal and sour milk.

  2. Stir in the baking soda until it foams.

  3. Add the eggs and salt, mixing well.

Cook the cakes

  1. Preheat a griddle until hot and grease it.

  2. Pour the batter onto the griddle to form cakes.

  3. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

White corn meal
Forms the main body of the cakes, giving them their grainy, sturdy texture.
Sour milk
Moistens the cornmeal and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lighten the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the cakes.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda until it foams. Baking soda starts reacting with the sour milk's acid right away, releasing gas that leavens the batter. Cooking should follow promptly, because the bubbles fade as the batter sits and the cakes can turn out flatter.

“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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