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Buttermilk Spoon Bread

A quick buttermilk bread made by mixing baking soda, eggs, butter, and meal, then baking until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Buttermilk Spoon Bread

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix baking soda into the buttermilk.

Make the batter

  1. Add the egg yolks and melted butter to the mixture.

  2. Gradually beat in the meal until combined.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  4. If the batter is too thick, add less meal to thin it.

  5. Pour the batter into a well-greased baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden and serve hot with butter.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Acts as the leavening agent, releasing gas when it meets the acidic buttermilk.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, and the whipped whites trap air that lightens the batter.
Meal
Provides the starch and bulk that set the batter into a crumb as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold air bubbles that give lift. Stirring vigorously deflates them, leaving a denser bread with less rise.

“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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