Skip to main content
Bread

Corn Batter Cakes

A thin batter of cornmeal, milk, eggs, and wheat flour cooked into golden cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 large bowl, combine the milk, eggs, and salt.

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

  3. Stir in the wheat flour until well mixed.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat a skillet and pour in small amounts of batter to form cakes.

  2. Cook until golden brown on both sides and 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 to the cakes as they set.
Corn meal
Provides the main body and grainy texture of the pancakes.
Wheat flour
Adds some gluten structure to help the cakes hold together.
Milk
Hydrates the batter and provides moisture for a thin, pourable texture.

The step that matters

Cook until golden brown on both sides. Cooking over steady heat lets the surface brown through the Maillard reaction while the centre sets. Pouring small amounts of batter keeps the cakes thin enough to cook through before they scorch.

“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

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipes