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Corn Pone

Corn Pone is a cornmeal bread baked with buttermilk, cornmeal, flour, syrup, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Corn Pone

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the buttermilk and baking soda.

  3. Add the cornmeal, flour, syrup, and salt; stir until well combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a crock.

Bake and cool

  1. Cover the crock with a skillet turned upside down.

  2. Bake for 3 hours.

  3. After removing from the oven, keep the skillet on until cool.

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 + syruptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Acidic liquid that reacts with baking soda to produce lift and tenderness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas, helping the bread rise.
Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the bread, giving it its coarse, crumbly texture.
Flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together as it bakes.
Syrup
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during the long bake.

The step that matters

Keeping the skillet on until cool. Leaving the crock covered while it cools lets the steam condense and soften the crust, so removing the cover too early can dry or harden the surface.

“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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