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Dessert

Corn Dodgers

A cornmeal dough with lard, sugar, and baking powder, baked into small rounds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Dodgers

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, salt, lard, and brown sugar.

  2. Slowly pour in boiling water while stirring until the meal is moistened.

  3. Let the mixture sit for at least 2 hours.

  4. Add milk to the mixture to soften the dough.

  5. Stir in baking powder.

Shape and bake

  1. Grease a baking pan.

  2. Shape the dough into small rounds and place them on the greased pan.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Corn meal
Forms the main body of the dough and gives the dodgers their corn flavor and texture.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and helps the crust brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the dodgers rise and become lighter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Milk
Softens the dough so it can be shaped and adds moisture for a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Boiling water must be poured slowly while stirring so the cornmeal hydrates evenly. Pouring it in at once can leave dry pockets or a gummy, uneven dough, and the starch needs to absorb water fully before the dough is shaped.

“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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