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Spider Corn Cake

A baked cornmeal cake with flour, eggs, sugar, sour milk, sweet milk, butter, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Spider Corn Cake

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 ↓

Spider Corn Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, salt, eggs, sugar, and sour milk with dissolved baking soda.

  3. In a hot frying pan, melt the butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the pan, then add sweet milk in the center without stirring.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.

  3. Serve whole.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the bulk of the batter, giving the cake its coarse, crumbly structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the cake as it bakes.
Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds a slight tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Butter
Melted in the hot pan, it adds fat for richness and helps the edges brown.

The step that matters

Adding the sweet milk without stirring. Pouring the sweet milk into the center without mixing leaves it as a separate layer, so the cake keeps distinct moist and set zones rather than blending into a uniform batter.

“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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