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Dessert

Corn Pone

A cornmeal cake baked with sour milk, egg, butter, lard, 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: 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 ↓

Corn Pone

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Pour the sour milk into the cornmeal and stir until smooth, saving out about ½ cup of the milk to dissolve the baking soda.

  2. Add the beaten yolk of the egg and the dissolved baking soda, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the melted lard and butter.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Bake in a shallow pan at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 25 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the bread, giving it its grainy, crumbly texture.
Egg
Yolk binds the batter, while whites folded in add lightness and help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Sour milk or cream
Adds moisture and acidity, which activates the baking soda.
Butter and lard
Adds fat for moisture, tenderness and browning.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that lifts the batter. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air in, so the pone bakes up lighter instead of 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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