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Bread

Corn Bread — Steamed

A steamed cornbread made with milk or buttermilk, sugar, lard, cornmeal, flour, 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 corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Corn Bread — Steamed

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine thick milk or buttermilk, sugar, and melted lard.

  2. Stir in corn meal, flour, baking soda, and salt until well mixed. Beat the mixture vigorously.

Steam and finish

  1. Pour into a buttered mold and steam for 1½ hours.

  2. Transfer to a hot oven for a few minutes.

  3. Turn out onto a hot plate and serve warm.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Corn meal
Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the cornbread.
Flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the bread holds together after steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Thick milk or buttermilk
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.
Melted lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer mouthfeel.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture vigorously. Vigorous beating develops the batter and distributes the leavening evenly, so the cornbread rises uniformly. Under-mixing can leave pockets of baking soda and a dense, uneven crumb.

“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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