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Dessert

Buttermilk Yeast Cakes

A yeast-based cake made with buttermilk, cornmeal, and flour, baked in boiling buttermilk and dried in the shade.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Yeast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in warm water.

  2. Add cornmeal, sugar, and salt.

  3. Let the mixture stand overnight.

Make the buttermilk batter

  1. In the morning, boil the buttermilk.

  2. Mix flour with enough water to make a smooth, stiff batter.

  3. Pour the batter into the boiling buttermilk, stirring constantly until cooked.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Add the cooled mixture to the yeast mixture.

  6. Set in a warm place until it ferments.

Shape and dry

  1. Work in enough cornmeal to make a stiff dough.

  2. Mold into cakes.

  3. Dry the cakes in the shade.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Ferments the mixture, making the cakes light and leavened.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity and tang, and its cooked starch thickens the batter.
Flour
Forms the stiff batter that gives the cakes their structure.
Cornmeal
Stiffens the dough and adds a coarser, drier texture to the cakes.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter into the boiling buttermilk. Constant stirring keeps the flour batter from clumping and cooking into lumps, so it blends into a smooth, evenly thickened base.

“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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