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Bread

Thin Corn Cake

Thin corn cake made by mixing cornmeal, sugar, salt, butter, and boiling water, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Thin Corn Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Pour boiling water over cornmeal, sugar, and salt. Beat thoroughly.

  2. Add the butter and mix well.

Bake

  1. Spread the mixture very thin on buttered baking sheets.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 20 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 + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starch and protein set when baked.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the cake brown lightly and taste rich.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Spreading the batter very thin. A thin layer lets moisture escape quickly and the cornmeal dry out and crisp evenly. A thick layer stays soft in the centre and may not bake through in the stated time.

“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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