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Bread

Corn-meal-and-wheat Bread

A bread made with cornmeal, wheat flour, milk or water, yeast, salt, sugar, and optional butter.

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

Corn-meal-and-wheat 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 cornmeal mush

  1. In a double boiler, combine the milk, water, corn meal, salt, sugar, and butter (if using).

  2. Heat the mixture gradually to boiling and cook for 20 minutes.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool to room temperature.

Make the dough

  1. Add the flour and yeast mixed with the remaining liquid.

  2. Mold the dough thoroughly and let it rise until it doubles in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into a loaf and place in a standard-sized pan.

  2. Let it rise until it nearly fills the pan.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 to 50 minutes.

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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Adds coarse texture and a mild corn flavor to the crumb.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten structure so the loaf can rise and hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and tenderness, and helps browning on the crust.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a touch of sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Cooling the cornmeal mixture before adding the flour and yeast. Cooked cornmeal that is still hot would kill the yeast or weaken its activity, so the mixture must cool to room temperature before the yeast goes in.

“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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