Skip to main content
Main

Batter Cakes, Corn Meal

A simple cornmeal batter cake cooked in a skillet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Batter Cakes, Corn Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix cornmeal, milk, egg, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Stir in melted butter.

Cook the cakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat and grease lightly.

  2. Pour batter onto the skillet to form cakes.

  3. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Cornmeal
Provides the main structure and the grainy, hearty texture of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps hold the cakes together as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking, lifting the cakes and making them lighter.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal so the batter pours smoothly and the cakes stay moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown during cooking.

The step that matters

Flip only when bubbles form on the surface. Bubbles show the batter underneath has begun to set. Flipping earlier can tear the cakes or leave raw batter inside, while heat that is too high browns the outside before the centre is cooked.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes