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Dessert

Spider Corn-cake

A sweet corn cake made with eggs, milk, cornmeal, flour, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Spider Corn-cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together.

  2. Add sweet milk, sour milk with dissolved baking soda, and salt; mix well.

  3. Combine cornmeal and flour, then add to the wet mixture.

Cook and bake

  1. Heat a skillet over medium heat.

  2. Melt the butter, coating the sides.

  3. Pour in the corn-cake mixture.

  4. Add one more cup of sweet milk without stirring.

  5. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 35 minutes until a custard streak forms.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and coarse, grainy texture of the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness.
Butter
Coats the skillet to add fat, browning, and flavour to the crust.

The step that matters

Add the extra sweet milk without stirring. Pouring milk on top without stirring lets it settle into a separate layer that sets as a custard streak, rather than mixing into the batter and making the cake dense or uneven.

“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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