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Dessert

Spider Corn-cake

A custard-like corn cake made with eggs, milk, cornmeal, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Spider Corn-cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together.

  2. Add the sweet milk and sour milk mixed with baking soda, then add salt.

  3. Mix in the cornmeal and flour.

Bake

  1. Heat a skillet and melt the butter, coating the sides.

  2. Pour in the corn-cake mixture and add the additional sweet milk without stirring.

  3. Bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 35 minutes until a custard streak forms.

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 + 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 and richness as the cake sets.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the cake.
Flour
Adds structure so the cake holds together alongside the cornmeal.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and browns the edges of the cake in the skillet.

The step that matters

Adding the extra sweet milk without stirring. Pouring the extra milk on top without stirring lets it settle into a separate custard layer as the cake bakes. Stirring would blend it into the batter and the custard streak would not form.

“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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