Name: Dropped Corn Bread
Ingredients: 1 pint fine white corn meal; 2 eggs; salt to taste; ½ cup milk

Why it works: Corn and milk 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 ↓

Dropped Corn Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

1 pint fine white corn meal
2 eggs
salt to taste
½ cup milk

Directions

Scald the corn meal with boiling water and let it cool.
Add the beaten eggs and salt.
Thin the mixture with milk until it can drop from a spoon.

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.

Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,484 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).