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Salt Rising Bread

A bread made with cornmeal, milk, water, salt, sugar, flour, and lard, baked after rising.

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 ↓

Salt Rising Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. Scald the cornmeal with the milk in a saucepan until just boiling.

  2. Cover and let it stand overnight.

  3. In the morning, add the warm water, salt, sugar, and enough flour to make a stiff batter. Beat thoroughly.

  4. Keep warm until light.

Make the dough

  1. Add a little warm water, salt, sugar, lard, and enough flour to make a moderately stiff dough.

  2. Knead for ten minutes.

  3. Mold into loaves and place in greased pans.

  4. Keep in a warm place until the dough doubles in size.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for one hour. Increase the heat for the last twenty 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. 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
Scalded to form the fermented starter that leavens the loaf.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the gas produced during rising.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the starter and dough.
Lard
Tenderizes the crumb and adds fat for a softer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the fermentation and adds mild sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Keep the starter warm until light. The starter must ferment long enough to become bubbly and airy. Too little warmth or time leaves it flat, and the bread will not rise properly.

“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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