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Dessert

Sour Milk Corn Cakes

A batter of bread flour, cornmeal, sour milk, and butter baked into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sour Milk Corn Cakes

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.

Mix the batter

  1. Mix the bread flour, cornmeal, salt, baking soda, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg until light and fluffy.

  3. Pour the sour milk into the dry mixture, add the beaten egg, and melted butter or beef dripping.

  4. Stir everything together and beat vigorously.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased shallow cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes at 400°F (200°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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Bread flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Fine yellow corn meal
Adds coarse texture and a distinct corn flavour to the cakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the batter.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda for rising.
Butter or beef dripping
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour in the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the batter vigorously after combining. Vigorous beating mixes the wet and dry ingredients and starts the baking soda reacting with the sour milk, so the cakes rise evenly. Once the batter sits, much of that lift is lost, so bake it promptly.

“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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