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Corn Drop Cakes

A fried batter of grated corn, eggs, flour, baking powder, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Drop Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs.

  2. Add the grated corn to the eggs.

  3. Sift the baking powder with the flour and fold it into the corn mixture.

  4. Stir in the melted butter and season with salt.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into hot oil and fry until browned.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  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).

Flour and butter 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

Grated corn
Provides the main bulk and sweet corn flavor, along with moisture in the batter.
Eggs
Bind the corn and flour together and help the cakes set as they cook.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter so the cakes hold their shape in the oil.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter, giving the cakes a lighter texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richer flavor and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Dropping the batter into hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot oil sets the outside quickly, helping the cakes hold their shape and brown evenly.

“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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