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Bread

Corn Pone

A sweet cornmeal cake baked with flour, sugar, sour cream, eggs, and leavening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Corn Pone

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, wheat flour, and sugar.

  3. Add sour cream or the milk and butter mixture to the dry ingredients.

  4. Mix in cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  5. Break in the eggs without beating them and stir until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the bread and gives it its coarse, grainy texture.
Wheat flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together when baked.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity reacts with the leavening to help the pone rise.
Cream of tartar
Acid that reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the batter rise.
Baking soda
Base that reacts with the acidic ingredients to lift the batter and aid browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.

The step that matters

Break in the eggs without beating them. Beating the eggs in would add air and change the batter's texture, while gently stirring keeps the batter tender. Stirring only until combined also avoids overworking the flour, which can make the crumb tough.

“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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