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 ↓
Stella's Corn Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
Mix the batter
In a bowl, mix the milk, cornmeal, eggs, and melted butter.
In a separate bowl, combine the cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and sugar.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and stir until well combined.
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.
Bake
Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Provides the bulk and corn flavour that forms the body of the cake.
- Eggs
- Add structure as they set, binding the cake together.
- Milk
- Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture to the batter.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
- Cream of tartar
- Acidifies the batter and reacts with baking soda to help it rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the cake.
The step that matters
Combine the dry ingredients into the wet mixture and stir until just combined. The cream of tartar and baking soda start producing gas as soon as they meet liquid, so the batter should go into the oven promptly. Stirring only until combined keeps the cornmeal batter from becoming tough and dense.
“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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