Skip to main content
Baking

Molasses Corn Cake

A sweet corn cake made with molasses, cornmeal, wheat flour, milk, butter, sugar, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Molasses Corn Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the corn meal, molasses, sugar, butter, salt, sour milk, and sweet milk in a double boiler.

  2. Cook over hot water for about 25 minutes after the mixture has become hot.

  3. After cooling, add the sifted wheat flour and baking soda, then mix in the beaten egg.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a shallow baking tin and bake.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow corn meal
Forms the main body of the cake, giving it its coarse, crumbly texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, slightly bitter sweetness.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda so the cake rises and stays tender.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure that helps hold the cake together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the flour and baking soda. Adding baking soda to a mixture that is still hot can cause it to react too quickly and lose lift. Letting the mixture cool first helps the rise come through in the oven.

“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

Cornmeal Griddle CakesCornmeal Griddle Cakes24 recipesCorn Breakfast CakesCorn Breakfast Cakes20 recipesDelicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipes