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Bread

Corn Pone

Corn pone is a cornmeal cake baked with butter, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

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 the batter

  1. In a pan, combine cornmeal, salt, and butter.

  2. Pour enough boiling water to wet the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Add milk until the mixture reaches a batter consistency.

  4. Stir in cream of tartar, beaten egg yolks, beaten egg whites, and dissolved baking soda. Mix everything together well.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. For best results, bake in two separate cakes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. 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 structure and grainy texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping the batter bind and brown while staying tender.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth, they trap air that helps the pone rise and become light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the batter rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that reacts with baking soda, producing bubbles that lighten the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites and leavening. Beaten egg whites and the baking soda and cream of tartar reaction provide most of the lift. Mixing gently after combining them keeps the air bubbles and gas inside the batter so the pone rises instead of turning 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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