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Dessert

Spider Cake

A quick cake made with cornmeal, wheat flour, eggs, sour and sweet milk, baking soda, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Spider Cake

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Spider 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix together the cornmeal, wheat flour, salt, baking soda, and butter.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, then stir in 1 cup of sweet milk and the sour milk.

  3. Grease a skillet with a piece of butter.

  4. Pour the mixture into the skillet and add the remaining cup of sweet milk without stirring.

Bake

  1. 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.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cake, giving it a coarse, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the cake rises and stays tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure that helps hold the cake together.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, and helps browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Adding the final cup of sweet milk without stirring. Stirring after the batter is in the skillet would mix the liquid through and deflate the gas bubbles from the baking soda reaction, leaving a denser cake. Keeping the top layer unstirred lets the surface set and brown while the inside rises.

“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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