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Breakfast Corn Cake

A cornmeal-based breakfast cake baked with buttermilk, water, baking soda, sugar or molasses, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Breakfast 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix cornmeal, flour, buttermilk, and water in a bowl and let it sit overnight.

  2. In the morning, add baking soda, sugar or molasses, melted butter, and salt to the mixture and stir until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 bulk of the cake and gives it its coarse, sturdy crumb.
Buttermilk
Its acidity softens the cornmeal over the overnight rest and adds tenderness and tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture, giving a softer texture to the crumb.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Letting the batter sit overnight. The long rest lets the acidic buttermilk soak into and soften the cornmeal, so the cake bakes tender rather than gritty. Baking soda is added only afterward so it can react and lift the batter in the oven.

“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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