Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓
Corn-cake
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Mix cream of tartar, sugar, and salt into the white Indian meal.
Melt the butter and mix it with the meal.
Beat the yolks of the eggs and stir them into the meal mixture.
Slowly add the milk to create a pourable batter.
Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and add it to the batter.
Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.
Bake
Preheat the cups until warm, then butter them.
Pour the batter into the cups and bake for 20 to 30 minutes.
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.
-
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
-
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
-
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
-
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- White indian meal
- Forms the main structure of the cake.
- Eggs
- Add richness and structure, with whipped whites giving lightness.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavour.
- Milk
- Provides the liquid that hydrates the meal into a batter.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter and helps the baking soda react for lift.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas for rising.
The step that matters
Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter. Whipped egg whites trap air that expands in the oven, giving lift. Over-mixing when folding knocks that air out, leaving a denser cake.
“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.
More corn cake recipes
You might also like
White Cake431 recipes
Pound Cake373 recipes
Orange Bundt Cake349 recipes
Spice Cake344 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.