Name: Kentucky Spoon Bread
Ingredients: 5 eggs; 1 cup white cornmeal; 1 cup boiling water; ½ cup sweet milk; 1 lump butter

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Kentucky Spoon Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the eggs separately.
Salt the cornmeal and scald it with boiling water until it resembles thick mush.
Quickly pour and stir the beaten yolks into the batter to prevent cooking the eggs.
Stir well and add a lump of butter.
Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.
Pour the mixture into a well-greased baking pan.
Make the batter thin with sweet milk.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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