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Corn Cakes

Corn cakes are fried batter made from grated corn, butter, milk, eggs, and crackers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the grated corn, melted butter, sweet milk, beaten eggs, and rolled crackers in a bowl until well combined.

Fry

  1. Heat butter in a skillet over medium-high heat.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture into the hot butter and fry until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Remove from the skillet and drain on paper towels.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 help the cakes hold their shape while frying.
Grated corn
Provides the main body, sweetness and moisture of the cakes.
Rolled crackers
Absorb moisture and add structure so the batter holds together.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a spoonable consistency.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the cakes brown in the pan.

The step that matters

Frying the spoonfuls in hot butter. The pan must be hot enough to set the outside quickly, so the cakes brown and hold their shape instead of spreading or sticking. Frying too cool a pan leads to greasy, fragile cakes.

“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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