Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Southern Corn Bread
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.
Make the batter
Combine cornmeal, sour milk, baking soda, eggs, melted lard, and salt in a bowl.
If batter is too stiff, add a little more milk.
Bake
Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).
Pour batter into a shallow tin and bake until golden.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cornmeal
- Provides the bulk and the gritty, classic corn texture of the bread.
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the bread rises and turns tender.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, lightening the batter.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as the bread sets.
- Melted lard
- Adds fat for moisture, tenderness and a richer flavour.
The step that matters
Pour batter into a shallow tin and bake until golden. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk, so the batter should go into the oven promptly to trap the gas while it rises. Baking until golden shows the crust has browned and the crumb has set through.
“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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