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Dessert

Virginia Corn Cake

A baked corn cake made with butter, milk, Indian meal, wheat flour, sugar, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Virginia Corn Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the butter in the boiling milk.

  2. Stir in the Indian meal and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, add the wheat flour, sugar, salt, and beaten eggs.

Bake

  1. Bake the batter in two 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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour 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

Indian meal
Cornmeal provides the main body and corn flavor, thickening into a sturdy batter.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the cakes hold their shape after baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the cakes firmness.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the crumb and carrying flavor.
Boiling milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.

The step that matters

Let the cornmeal cool before adding the flour and eggs. Hot batter would start cooking the beaten eggs unevenly and could make the mixture loose or lumpy. Cooling lets the cornmeal thicken so the eggs blend in smoothly and set evenly in the oven.

“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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