Skip to main content
Main

Corn-Meal

A cornmeal mush cooked with flour, sugar or molasses, baking soda, salt, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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-Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald the cornmeal in a pot.

  2. Add flour, sugar or molasses, baking soda, and salt to the cornmeal and make a batter.

  3. Boil the batter for at least 1 hour, stirring often.

  4. Alternatively, cook in a tin pan set in boiling water.

Serve and use leftovers

  1. Serve as mush with butter, sugar, and milk for supper.

  2. The next morning, thin the leftover mush with hot water.

  3. Add eggs.

  4. Bake as muffins or griddle cakes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, 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 (in the method)
Forms the main body of the mush, setting as it cooks and swells in the water.
All-purpose flour
Adds extra starch to help the batter hold together and set more firmly.
Eggs
Bind the thinned leftover mush so it holds its shape when baked or fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the leftover cakes rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Boil the batter for at least 1 hour, stirring often. Cornmeal starch must be fully cooked through to swell and thicken properly. Stirring often prevents scorching on the bottom of the pot and lumps forming.

“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.

More cornmeal mush recipes

Fried 14 See all 94 →

You might also like

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipesGreen Corn SoupGreen Corn Soup46 recipesCornmeal GruelCornmeal Gruel41 recipes