Skip to main content
Main

Southern Corn Bread

A quick baked cornmeal bread with lard, eggs, and milk.

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

Why it works: Egg and milk 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 ↓

Southern Corn 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. Sift the cornmeal and baking powder together.

  2. Add melted lard, salt, beaten eggs, and enough milk to make a thin batter.

Mix and pour

  1. Beat the mixture vigorously for 2 minutes.

  2. Pour into a well-greased pan dusted with dry cornmeal.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the crumb and gives the cornbread its characteristic flavour and texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cornbread rises and becomes lighter.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and helps prevent sticking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cornbread sets.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture, turning the mixture into a batter.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture vigorously for 2 minutes. Beating incorporates air and begins to activate the baking powder, which helps the cornbread rise. Under-mixing leaves a dense result, while the thin batter needs enough mixing to combine evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes