Name: South Carolina Corn Bread
Ingredients: 4 cups fine corn meal; 2 ½ cups wheat flour; 2 teaspoons salt; 1 pint mashed sweet potatoes; 1 cake yeast; warm water (enough to form a stiff batter); boiling water (for scalding the meal)

Why it works: Corn and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

South Carolina Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix 1 pint of corn meal and 1 pint of wheat flour, then add enough warm water to form a stiff batter.
Dissolve the yeast cake in a small amount of water and add it to the batter.
Keep the mixture in a warm place until it becomes light.
Scald the remaining corn meal with boiling water, then let it cool.
Add the cooled scalded corn meal to the sponge mixture.

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.

Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together465 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Wheat + sweet potatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together59 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Corn + sweet potatotop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together153 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Flour + sweet potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together627 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).