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Thin Corn Cake

Thin corn cake made from corn meal, salt, boiling water, butter, and sugar, baked slowly for about twenty minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tea work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 89 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Thin Corn Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine one cup corn-meal (yellow), one-quarter teaspoonful salt, one round tablespoonful butter, one-half cup boiling water, and one teaspoonful sugar.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the corn-meal, sugar, and salt, then beat thoroughly.

  3. Add the butter and, when well mixed, spread very thin on buttered tin sheets.

  4. Bake slowly for about twenty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

151Calories
0 gProtein
12 gFat
13 gCarbs

Counts 3 of 4 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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 + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

  5. Butter + teatop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn-meal
Forms the body of the cake, and boiling water softens it into a spreadable batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness, and helps the cake brown lightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Spread very thin on the tin sheets. A thin layer lets the corn-meal dry and set through during baking. A thick layer stays moist in the center and bakes unevenly.

“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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