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Corn Batter Cakes

A thin batter of cornmeal, milk, eggs, and wheat flour 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 wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Batter Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, eggs, and salt.

  2. Gradually add sifted corn meal until you achieve a thin batter.

  3. Beat in the wheat flour until well mixed.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour small amounts of the batter onto a hot griddle and cook until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and richness as the pancakes set.
Corn meal
Provides the main body and grainy texture of the pancakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that hydrates the corn meal into a pourable batter.
Wheat flour
Adds some gluten-based structure to help the pancakes hold together.

The step that matters

Cooking on a hot griddle. Cornmeal has no gluten, so the pancakes rely on egg proteins to set. Pouring onto a properly hot griddle sets the outside quickly and gives even golden browning, while a cool pan lets them spread and stick.

“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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