Name: Tip -top Corn Bread
Ingredients: butter; 1 pint sour milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 3 eggs

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Tip -top Corn Bread

Ingredients

butter
1 pint sour milk
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 eggs

Directions

Melt some butter in a pan and bring it to a boil.
Pour the melted butter over the cornmeal.
Add 1 pint of sour milk, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 3 eggs.
Mix well and pour into shallow pans.
Bake until golden brown.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

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