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Dessert

Virginia Batter-cake

A batter cake made with boiled rice, cornmeal, milk, egg, butter, and salt, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Virginia Batter-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.

Prepare the rice

  1. Boil the rice the day before and drain it.

  2. While the rice is warm, stir in the butter.

Make and bake the batter

  1. The next morning, mix the milk, cornmeal, egg, and salt together.

  2. Stir in the cup of rice and pour the mixture into 2 greased pans.

  3. Bake immediately at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Boiled rice
Adds body and a tender, starchy crumb to the batter.
Cornmeal
Provides the grainy structure and sturdy texture of the cake.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and softness, coating the rice and tenderising the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and gives the batter its moisture.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after mixing. Cornmeal begins absorbing liquid as soon as it is wet, and the leavening and setting depend on the batter going into the oven promptly. Waiting lets the batter thicken and can leave the cake dense.

“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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