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Bread

Corn Bread

A simple cornmeal bread made with cornmeal, bread sponge, flour, salt, and water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Corn Bread

Why it works: Bread and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal and bread sponge.

  2. Add enough water to wet the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the flour and salt until well combined.

Rise, shape and bake

  1. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

  2. Knead the dough well and place it in a baking dish.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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 main body of the bread and gives it its corn flavor.
Bread sponge
A fermented starter that makes the dough rise and adds flavor.
Flour
Adds gluten-forming protein that gives the dough more structure.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. The sponge's yeast produces gas that inflates the dough. Letting it reach double size gives a lighter crumb, while stopping early can leave the bread dense.

“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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