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Dessert

Corn Meal Puffs

A baked cornmeal cake made with milk, corn flour, wheat flour, eggs, sugar, butter, baking soda, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Meal Puffs

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Boil the milk in a pot.

  2. Stir in the corn flour, wheat flour, and salt; boil for 15 minutes, stirring well.

  3. Add the butter and beat the mixture in a bowl for 3 minutes until smooth.

  4. Once cooled, mix in the beaten eggs, sugar, seasoning, and dissolved baking soda. Whip the mixture thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into greased cups and bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C). Turn out of cups and serve with pudding sauce or butter.

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 + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

White corn flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once boiled and cooked.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help the puffs rise and set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to lift the batter and make it light.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with the baking soda to produce rising gas.
Milk
Hydrates the flours and gives the batter a tender, rich body.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda and cream of tartar. Baking soda and cream of tartar must react while the batter is still wet and the mixture is whipped, because the gas they release is what lifts the puffs. Waiting too long or under-whipping lets the gas escape and leaves dense puffs.

“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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