Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Fried Corn Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Crumble the cold corn bread into fine pieces.
In a saucepan, add the crumbled corn bread and pour in just enough hot water to moisten it.
Mix in butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste.
Warm the mixture over low heat until heated through.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,324 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together547 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cold corn bread
- Forms the base of the dish, providing the crumbly body that the other ingredients are mixed into.
- Hot water
- Moistens the crumbled corn bread so it softens and holds together while warming.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and flavor as the mixture warms.
“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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