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Dessert

Gems for Breakfast

A small cornmeal and flour cake baked in tins, made with sweet milk, eggs, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Gems for Breakfast

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and baking powder together.

  2. Add the cornmeal and mix well.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs and combine with the sweet milk and melted butter.

  4. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into small tins.

  2. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and become light.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarser, grainy texture and a toasty corn flavour to the cakes.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and adds moisture and tenderness to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness and flavour in the finished cakes.

The step that matters

Stir the batter until just combined. Once the wet and dry ingredients meet, gluten in the flour starts to develop. Overmixing makes the cakes tough and dense, and it also knocks out some of the gas from the baking powder, so the cakes rise less.

“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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