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Dessert

Sweet Milk Corn Cakes

A baked cake made with sweet milk, cornmeal, flour, sugar, butter, egg, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sweet Milk Corn Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together.

  2. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk and add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the flour, cornmeal, and cream of tartar until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and 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. 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar and milk to lift the batter as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that activates the baking soda, helping the cakes rise and stay tender.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse texture and a distinct corn flavor to the cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown as the cakes bake.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly with the acid in the batter. Undissolved pockets cause bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, cream):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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