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Bread

Soda Bread of Corn Meal

A quick soda bread made with cornmeal, milk, baking soda, butter, salt, and optional wheat flour.

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

Soda Bread of Corn Meal

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, sour milk, salt, baking soda, and butter.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal and wheat flour until well mixed.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased tin.

Bake

  1. Bake for 40 minutes or 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. Milk + buttertop 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

Sour milk or buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk or buttermilk to leaven the bread.
Cornmeal
Forms the main structure of the bread and gives its coarse, crumbly texture.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Butter or lard
Adds fat, contributing tenderness and flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Combine the milks with baking soda quickly. Baking soda reacts with acid as soon as it is wet, releasing gas. Mixing promptly and getting the batter into the oven keeps that gas trapped, so the loaf rises well instead of falling flat.

“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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