Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓
Cornmeal Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Beat the egg until light, then add the sour milk.
Sift together cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.
Mix and cook
Add the dry ingredients to the egg and milk mixture, then beat hard for one minute.
Bake on a griddle until golden brown.
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.
-
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
-
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
-
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and flour 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the cakes set.
- Sour milk
- Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the leavening to lift the batter.
- Cornmeal
- Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their coarse, tender texture.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas and make the cakes rise.
- Baking powder
- Adds extra leavening so the cakes rise and stay light during cooking.
The step that matters
Beat hard for one minute. Beating develops gluten in the flour and mixes the leavening evenly, so the cakes rise well. Once the dry ingredients are combined, the batter should be cooked promptly because the leavening loses its lift over time.
“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.
More cornmeal cakes recipes
You might also like
Cornbread345 recipes
Bread Pudding336 recipes
Milk Bread Rolls242 recipes
Potato Bread124 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.