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Corn Cream Cake

A cake made from milk or buttermilk, sour thick cream, baking soda, and cornmeal, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Cream Cake

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.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the milk or buttermilk with the sour thick cream.

  2. Add baking soda to sweeten the cream.

  3. Stir in cornmeal until the mixture thickens to the consistency of pound cake.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into floured pans, about 1 inch thick.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk or buttermilk
Provides liquid that combines with the cream to form the batter base.
Sour thick cream
Adds fat and tang, giving the cake a rich, moist texture.
Baking soda
Sweetens the cream as the record directs, and reacts with the acidic cream and buttermilk.
Cornmeal
Thickens the mixture to pound cake consistency and gives the crumb its grainy body.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cornmeal. The batter should thicken to a pound cake consistency. Too little cornmeal leaves it runny and it may not set, while too much makes it stiff and dry.

“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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