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Virginia Spoon Corn Bread

A corn bread made with hominy, cornmeal, eggs, milk, and Crisco, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Virginia Spoon 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.

Cook the hominy

  1. Add salt to boiling water and gradually stir in the hominy.

  2. Cook for 3-4 minutes while stirring.

  3. Let it cook undisturbed over boiling water for 30 minutes.

Make the batter

  1. Add Crisco, milk, beaten eggs, and sifted cornmeal with baking powder. Mix thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a greased baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Serve hot with a spoon.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hominy
Adds a coarse, tender body and chewy texture to the cornbread.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure as it bakes.
Corn meal
Forms the main body of the cornbread and gives its characteristic corn flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cornbread rise and turn light.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Crisco
Adds fat for tenderness and helps keep the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Let the hominy cook undisturbed. Cooking the hominy gently and without stirring lets it soften fully and thicken evenly, so it blends into the batter instead of staying hard or clumping.

“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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