Name: Egg Bread As Made in the South
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 1 cup buttermilk; 1 tablespoon baking soda; 2 tablespoons hot water; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 tablespoon sugar; cornmeal (enough to make a stiff batter); melted fat (for mixing and greasing)

Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Egg Bread As Made in the South

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 batter

Beat the eggs until light.
Add buttermilk, salt, sugar, and melted fat to the eggs.
Sift in cornmeal until the batter is rather stiff.
Mix baking soda with hot water and stir it into the batter, adding more buttermilk if needed for consistency.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into a well-greased pan, no more than ½ inch thick.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the top is golden brown.
Cut into squares, split, and butter generously; serve hot.

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.

Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,973 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Eggs: Give the batter structure and help it set as it bakes.
Buttermilk: Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Cornmeal: Provides the bulk and coarse texture that forms the body of the bread.

The step that matters

Mixing the baking soda into the batter. Baking soda reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas, so it should be stirred in promptly and evenly and the batter baked soon after, before the gas escapes and the bread rises less.

“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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Egg Bread As Made in the South