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Carolina Corn-cake

A corn cake made with sour milk, cornmeal, flour, butter, salt, baking soda, and eggs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Carolina Corn-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the baking soda into the flour through a fine cloth.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, salt, and the sifted flour.

  3. Add ⅔ of the sour milk and the well-beaten eggs; mix thoroughly.

  4. Stir in the remaining sour milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into patty pans or large pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden, then cut into square pieces and serve.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the cake rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the cake sets.
Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cake, giving its coarse, crumbly texture.
Flour
Adds gluten-forming proteins that give the cake more cohesion and structure.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the remaining sour milk. The baking soda must meet the acid in the sour milk while the batter is still wet and before it goes into the pans. Once the leavening reaction has run, the gas escapes if the batter sits, so the batter should go into the oven promptly and not be left standing.

“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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