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Corn-Meal

A cornmeal mush cooked with flour, sugar or molasses, baking soda, and salt, served with butter, sugar, and milk, then baked into muffins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Corn-Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the porridge

  1. Scald the cornmeal in a pot.

  2. Add fine flour, sugar or molasses, baking soda, and salt to the scalded cornmeal.

  3. Make a batter and boil for 1 hour, stirring often, or cook in a tin pan set in boiling water.

Serve and use leftovers

  1. Serve as mush with butter, sugar, and milk for supper.

  2. Thin the leftover mush with hot water the next morning.

  3. Add 2-3 eggs and bake as muffins or griddle-cakes.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Cornmeal (in the method)
Forms the bulk of the mush and sets as it cooks, giving body to the porridge.
Fine flour
Adds starch that thickens the batter and helps it hold together.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and, in molasses, a deeper flavor and some browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the batter to produce gas, helping it rise and lighten.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness when baked as muffins or griddle-cakes.

The step that matters

Cook the batter long enough with frequent stirring. Cornmeal starch needs sustained boiling to gelatinize fully and become smooth. Stirring often prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot and lumps forming as the starch thickens.

“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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