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Corn Pone

A sweet corn cake made with milk, buttermilk, cornmeal, flour, eggs, butter, molasses, sugar, baking soda, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Corn Pone

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil the new milk and pour it over 1 cup of the cornmeal.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, and molasses, and beat until cold.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the buttermilk and pour it into the mixture.

  4. Add the beaten eggs and stir well.

  5. Fold in the remaining cornmeal, flour, and baking powder lightly.

Cook

  1. Steam or bake for 1 hour or more.

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).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the pone, giving it its coarse, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during cooking.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the pone rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, lightening the batter.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift so the pone rises as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the remaining cornmeal, flour, and baking powder lightly.. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour and knocks out the gas bubbles from the leavening, leading to a dense pone. Folding gently keeps the batter airy so it rises well.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, buttermilk, flour, egg, butter, molasses, sugar. 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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