Name: Florida Corn Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup milk or water; 2 cups white cornmeal; 1 tablespoon salt pork fat; 1 tablespoon baking powder; 1 teaspoon salt

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

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake

In a mixing bowl, combine the milk or water, cornmeal, salt pork fat, baking powder, and salt, and mix all ingredients thoroughly.
Pour the mixture into two thin cakes on a baking sheet.
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.

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: Forms the main structure and body of the cake.
Milk or water: Moistens the cornmeal so it forms a workable batter.
Salt pork fat: Adds fat for tenderness and richer flavor and helps browning.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter to lift and lighten the cakes.

“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.