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Dessert

Carolina Corn-cake

A baked corn cake made with sour milk, cornmeal, flour, butter, eggs, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Carolina Corn-cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Sift the baking soda into the flour through a fine cloth.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, salt, and the sifted flour.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix in two-thirds of the sour milk.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

  4. Stir in the melted butter and the remaining sour milk.

  5. Pour the batter into patty pans or large pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden and cut into square pieces to serve.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, lifting the batter.
Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cake, giving it a coarse, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to leaven the cake and help it rise.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-forming structure that helps hold the cake together.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness, moisture and a richer flavor.

The step that matters

Sift the baking soda into the flour. Baking soda must be evenly distributed so it reacts with the sour milk throughout the batter. Clumps can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

“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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