Skip to main content
Bread

Cornmeal Cakes

Cornmeal Cakes are a yeast‑leavened cornmeal dough baked into biscuits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cornmeal Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Add ½ cup unmelted lard to hot cornmeal mush.

  2. Salt well when lukewarm and add ½ cup yeast.

  3. Prepare this mixture at noon.

  4. In the evening, add 1 teaspoon baking soda and knead in wheat flour until dough is like biscuit dough.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, mold into biscuits and let them rise in the pan before baking.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal mush
Forms the base of the dough and gives the cakes their corn flavour and body.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, savoury flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it becomes light and risen.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough's acidity to add lift and help browning.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein so the dough holds its shape like biscuit dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in the pan before baking. The yeast needs time to ferment and build gas bubbles; baking before the dough has risen produces dense cakes with poor volume.

“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.

More cornmeal cakes recipes

Fried 4Hominy 4Indian 3 See all 85 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes