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Corn-meal Flapjacks

Flapjacks made from scalded cornmeal batter, leavened with baking powder and folded egg whites, cooked on a griddle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Corn-meal Flapjacks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the milk in a pot.

  2. Stir in the butter, cornmeal, and sugar.

  3. Cover and let sit overnight.

  4. In the morning, add the egg yolks, baking powder, flour, and salt; mix well.

  5. Just before baking, fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Cook

  1. Cook on a preheated griddle 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the flapjacks their grainy, sturdy texture.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they trap air that lightens the batter and helps it rise.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and help bind the batter together.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-based structure that holds the flapjacks together alongside the cornmeal.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to give the flapjacks lift as they cook.
Butter
Adds fat for flavor and a tender texture, and helps browning on the griddle.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently, just before baking. Beaten egg whites hold air bubbles that give lift. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, and waiting too long lets the batter lose its rise, so the flapjacks turn out dense.

“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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