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Corn-starch Pancakes

A light pancake made with corn starch, eggs, milk, and water, cooked in butter or coconut oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 306 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Corn-starch Pancakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine the egg yolks, corn starch, warm milk, water, and salt in a bowl; beat well until smooth.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until fully incorporated.

Cook the pancakes

  1. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and add butter and coconut oil.

  2. Pour batter into the skillet and cook until golden brown on both sides.

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 + coconuttop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together306 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + coconuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,648 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter while emulsifying it smooth.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the batter and give the pancakes a airy texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the batter and gives the pancakes a tender, delicate texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the pancakes brown through milk sugars and proteins.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Deflating the whipped egg whites by overmixing removes the air that lightens the batter, so the pancakes turn out dense instead of light.

Swap the coconut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, corn, milk, butter):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, corn, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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