Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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.
Make the batter
Boil the milk and pour it over the sifted cornmeal.
Let the mixture cool.
Mix in the melted butter and salt.
Add the eggs and stir until well combined.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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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
- Forms the body of the bread, giving it its grainy structure and corn flavour.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
- Milk
- Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
The step that matters
Boiling the milk and pouring it over the cornmeal. Scalding the milk and pouring it over the cornmeal hydrates the starch in the meal, so the batter absorbs liquid evenly and the finished bread is moist rather than dry and gritty.
“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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