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Florida Corn Cake

A simple corn cake made with cornmeal, milk or water, salt, baking powder, and pork fat, 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 pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,386 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Florida Corn Cake

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the milk or water, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and pork fat until thoroughly combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into two thin cake pans.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden brown.

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 + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

White cornmeal
Provides the main structure and corn flavor once hydrated and baked.
Milk or water
Hydrates the cornmeal so it forms a spreadable batter that sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and lighten.
Pork fat
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Spread thinly, the cornmeal batter dries out quickly, so overbaking makes the cake dry and crumbly. Browning shows the surface is cooked and the sugars and starches have toasted, so color is the main cue to check.

“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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