Skip to main content
Main

To Make Polenta

Polenta is a cornmeal dish cooked in water and butter, then baked with cheese and butter layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Polenta

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the polenta

  1. Combine 1 quart of water and 2 tablespoons of butter in a pot.

  2. Mix cornmeal with cold water and salt until smooth in a bowl.

  3. Add the cornmeal mixture to the hot buttered water and boil, stirring continuously until thickened.

  4. Once the mixture can be handled, form it into a ball and let it cool completely.

Layer and bake

  1. Cut the cooled polenta into thin slices and layer them in a deep dish.

  2. Top with slices of cheese and bits of butter, then repeat layers until the dish is full.

  3. Finish with a layer of cheese and butter on top.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the thick, starchy body of the dish as it cooks and sets.
Cheese
Melts into the layers, adding richness and binding the slices together while baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel, and helps the layers brown lightly.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal into the boiling water. Cornmeal added to liquid can clump or scorch if not stirred constantly, because starch granules swell unevenly. Continuous stirring keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened.

“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.

More polenta recipes

Pudding 7Bean 5Cheese Cakes 5 See all 25 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes