Skip to main content
Bread

Virginia Corn Bread

A moist cornmeal bread baked with butter, milk, flour, sugar, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Virginia Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the butter in the boiling milk.

  2. Scald the cornmeal in the milk mixture.

  3. When cool, add the wheat flour, sugar, salt, and beaten eggs.

  4. Mix well and pour into two well-buttered cake tins.

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.

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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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 crumb and gives the cornbread its characteristic texture and flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure as it bakes.
Wheat flour
Adds structure and helps hold the crumb together alongside the cornmeal.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps keep the crumb tender.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal so it swells and softens, giving the batter its moisture.

The step that matters

Scald the cornmeal in the milk mixture. Cornmeal needs hot liquid to hydrate fully. Scalding softens the grains so the cornbread is moist and not gritty. Adding eggs or flour before the cornmeal has cooled and softened can produce a dense, uneven texture.

“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.

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes