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Spider Corn Cake

A sweet corn cake baked in a cast iron skillet with eggs, milk, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Spider Corn Cake

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 ↓

Spider Corn Cake

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the sweet milk, sour milk, salt, baking soda, cornmeal, and flour; mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. Heat a spider (cast iron skillet) and melt the butter in it, then pour the mixture into the hot spider.

  2. Pour ½ cup sweet milk over the top without stirring.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 35 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness.
Butter
Melted in the hot skillet, it adds fat and helps the bottom brown and release.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the hot spider. The skillet must be hot and the butter melted before the batter goes in. Hot fat starts the crust browning and helps prevent sticking, while the baking soda reaction begins right away.

“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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