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Corn-Meal

A boiled cornmeal mush served with butter, sugar, and milk, sometimes baked into muffins or griddle-cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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-Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the cornmeal in a pot.

  2. Add fine flour, sugar or molasses, baking soda, and salt to the scalded cornmeal. Make a batter.

  3. Boil for at least 1 hour, stirring often.

  4. Alternatively, cook in a tin pan set in boiling water.

Serve or bake

  1. Serve as mush with butter, sugar, and milk for supper.

  2. Thin the leftover mush with hot water. Add eggs.

  3. Bake as muffins or griddle-cakes.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

Cornmeal (in the method)
Forms the main body of the porridge and sets into a firm, mushy texture when cooked.
Eggs
Bind the thinned mush and help set the batter when baked or fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten when baked or griddled.
Fine flour
Adds starch that helps the batter hold together and gives a finer crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deeper, browned flavour.

The step that matters

Boil for at least 1 hour, stirring often. Cornmeal starch must be fully gelatinised by long boiling to lose its raw, gritty taste and to thicken properly. Frequent stirring prevents scorching and lumps on the bottom of the pot.

“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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