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Carolina Egg-cakes

A cornmeal batter with eggs, flour, and milk, fried into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Carolina Egg-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift the cornmeal into a bowl and mix in the salt.

  2. Scald the mixture with hot water and stir until it cools.

  3. Break in the eggs and continue stirring.

  4. Slowly sprinkle in the flour and thin the batter with sweet milk until it runs easily.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat a griddle until very hot and grease it well with lard.

  2. Fry the batter in small cakes until golden brown.

  3. Serve hot with butter on the side.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the body of the cakes and gives them their grainy, sturdy texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the cakes hold together while cooking.
Flour
Adds extra structure so the batter holds its shape on the griddle.
Sweet milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture and softness.
Lard
Greases the griddle so the cakes release cleanly and brown evenly.

The step that matters

Fry the batter in small cakes until golden brown. The griddle must be very hot before the batter goes on. Batter poured onto a cool surface spreads, sticks and absorbs grease instead of setting and browning.

“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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