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Bread

Corn Rolls

A baked cornmeal batter with milk, sugar, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Corn Rolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, sugar, and salt.

  2. Stir in boiling milk and let the mixture cool.

  3. Once cool, add the beaten eggs and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into gem pans or well-buttered cups.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Provides the main body and coarse, grainy texture of the rolls.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the rolls structure.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the milk mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs begin to set when heated, so adding them to very hot batter can scramble or curdle them. Cooling first lets the eggs blend smoothly and keeps the batter even.

“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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