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Dessert

White Cornmeal Cake

A simple baked cornmeal cake made with scalded milk and salt, baked until crisp and served with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

White Cornmeal Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal and salt.

  3. Gradually pour in the scalded milk, stirring until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered shallow pan to a depth of ¼ inch.

  2. Bake until crisp.

  3. Split the cake and spread with butter.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

White cornmeal
Forms the body of the cake and gives it a coarse, crisp texture when baked.
Scalded milk
Hydrates the cornmeal into a spreadable batter and adds moisture and tenderness.

The step that matters

Bake until crisp. Cornmeal batter is thin and bakes into a cake that depends on drying out fully; stopping too early leaves it soft and gummy rather than crisp.

“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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