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Bread

Raised Corn Bread

A yeast-raised bread made with cornmeal, milk or water, and salt and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Heat 2 cups of milk or water until boiling.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of sifted cornmeal and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

  5. Add the dissolved yeast cake and cover the mixture.

  6. Set in a cool place to rise overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, stir in 1 cup of cornmeal and the remaining flour.

  2. Knead the dough thoroughly.

Rise and bake

  1. Grease a bread pan and place the dough back in it.

  2. Let it rise slowly until doubled in bulk.

  3. Shape into loaves and let rise until twice the size.

  4. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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

Cornmeal
Gives the loaf its coarse texture and corn flavour.
Yeast cake
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Remaining white or whole wheat flour
Provides gluten structure that traps gas and holds the loaf's shape.
Milk or water
Hydrates the cornmeal and flour so the dough can form and develop.

The step that matters

Overnight cool rise. The yeast needs a cool, slow fermentation to build flavour and gas evenly. Letting the mixture get too warm can overwork the yeast and weaken the final texture.

“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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