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Dessert

Corn-cakes

Corn cakes made with cornmeal, butter, cream, eggs, milk, and salt, baked until golden.

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 ↓

Corn-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine cornmeal and salt.

  2. Melt the butter and mix it with the cream.

  3. Add the butter and cream mixture to the cornmeal.

  4. Incorporate the beaten eggs.

  5. Gradually add milk until the batter is thin.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into pans and bake 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Egg + milktop 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

Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cakes and gives them their grainy texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cakes set.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cakes brown.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Milk
Thins the batter to a pourable consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Gradually add milk until the batter is thin. Cornmeal absorbs liquid as it sits, so the batter thickens over time. Adding milk slowly lets you reach a pourable consistency without overthinning it, which would make the cakes flat and fragile.

“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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