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Dessert

Susie’s Spider Corn Cake

A quick cornmeal cake made with sour milk, soda, eggs, butter, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Fannie Merritt Farmer · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 6 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 ↓

Susie’s Spider Corn Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix soda, salt, and corn meal.

  2. Gradually add eggs, well beaten, and milk.

Bake

  1. Heat frying-pan.

  2. Grease sides and bottom of pan with butter.

  3. Pour mixture into pan.

  4. Place pan on middle grate in hot oven.

  5. Cook twenty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

455Calories
17 gProtein
26 gFat
42 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Sour Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Corn1/2 cup kernels (82g)77
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

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

By Fannie Merritt Farmer. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Egg + buttertop 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 add structure as the cake sets.
Sour milk
Moistens the batter and its acidity reacts with the soda to lift it.
Soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas and make the cake rise.
Corn meal
Forms the body of the cake, giving it its grainy texture.
Butter
Greases the pan and adds richness and browning at the edges.

The step that matters

Heating the pan before pouring in the batter. A hot, greased pan starts the crust setting immediately, so the cake releases cleanly and browns evenly instead of sticking or spreading.

“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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