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Bread

Soda Bread of Corn Meal

A quick soda bread made with cornmeal, wheat flour, milk, butter or lard, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Soda Bread of Corn Meal

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the sweet milk, sour milk, salt, baking soda, and melted butter or lard.

  2. Add the cornmeal and wheat flour, stirring until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased tin.

  2. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

  4. Buttermilk + wheattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together226 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk or buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce carbon dioxide, which lifts the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to leaven the bread without yeast.
Cornmeal
Forms the main structure and gives the bread its coarse texture and flavor.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein that helps hold the loaf together.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Combining the batter. Stir only until the ingredients are just combined. The baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk, so the batter should go into the tin and oven promptly to keep the gas bubbles that give lift. Overmixing the wheat flour can toughen the bread.

“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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