Skip to main content
Main

To Make Polenta

A baked cornmeal dish layered with cheese and butter.

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

Why it works: Butter and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Make Polenta

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the polenta

  1. Put a large spoonful of butter in a quart of hot water.

  2. Wet cornmeal with cold water in a bowl.

  3. Add some salt to the wet cornmeal to make it smooth.

  4. Add the cornmeal mixture to the buttered hot water.

  5. Let it boil, stirring continually until done.

Shape and layer

  1. Form the cooked polenta into a ball and let it cool.

  2. Cut the cooled polenta into thin slices.

  3. Layer the slices in a deep dish.

  4. Add slices of cheese between the layers of polenta.

  5. Add bits of butter between the layers of polenta until the dish is full.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes, ensuring cheese and butter are on top.

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 + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the thick body of the polenta as its starch swells and sets when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the layers turn tender and golden as they bake.
Cheese
Melts between the layers and browns on top, adding savoury flavour and binding.

The step that matters

Stirring the cornmeal while it boils. Cornmeal can settle and scorch on the bottom of the pan or form lumps if not stirred constantly, so keeping it moving keeps the texture smooth and even.

“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 polenta recipes

Pudding 7Bean 5Cheese Cakes 5 See all 25 →

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes