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Baking

Splendid Corn Cake

A baked corn cake made with cornmeal, water, salt, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,345 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Splendid Corn Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the corn meal with hot water until it is the consistency of mush.

  2. Let it cool completely.

  3. Add salt, melted butter, and beaten eggs to the mixture. Mix until the batter is about as thick as pound cake.

Bake

  1. Pour into a baking dish and bake for 1 hour in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the bulk of the cake and sets into a tender, starchy crumb when baked.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the cake set firm as it bakes.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.

The step that matters

Scalding the corn meal. Pouring hot water over the corn meal fully hydrates and gelatinizes its starch, so the batter bakes into a smooth, cohesive cake rather than a gritty one. Cooling it completely before adding the eggs keeps them from scrambling.

“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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