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Virginia Sour Milk Batter Bread

A cornmeal-based bread made with sour milk, butter, flour, salt, and baking soda, baked until a broom straw comes out clean.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Virginia Sour Milk Batter Bread

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.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the cornmeal and let it cool.

  2. Beat the cooled cornmeal into the clabber with melted butter, flour, and salt.

  3. Add another pint of clabber and beat well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in ½ cup of clabber and mix it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pudding dish.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  3. The bread is done when a broom straw inserted comes out clean.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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 bread, giving it a coarse, crumbly texture.
Clabber
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to release gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the clabber's acid to leaven the bread.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Flour
Adds a little gluten to help hold the loaf together.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking soda. The soda reacts with the clabber's acid to release carbon dioxide, which raises the bread. If it is not dissolved and mixed evenly, pockets of soda can bake into bitter spots and uneven holes.

“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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