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Maryland Spoon Corn Bread

A cornbread made with milk, cornmeal, eggs, flour, salt, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Maryland Spoon Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk in a pot until it boils.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal and cook until very thick, stirring constantly.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Add the beaten eggs, flour, and salt to the cornmeal mixture.

  6. Mix in the butter while the cornmeal is still hot.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

  2. Bake the dish for 35 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Forms the thick base and gives the cornbread its grainy structure.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to hold the cornbread together.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Flour
Adds additional structure so the cornbread holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Cook the cornmeal until very thick. Cooking the cornmeal in boiling milk gelatinizes its starch, so the mixture thickens into a stable base. If it stays thin, the batter will be loose and the baked cornbread may be wet and crumbly.

“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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