Skip to main content
Bread

Southern Soft Corn Bread

A soft, lightly sweetened cornbread baked with egg, milk, cornmeal, butter, and baking powder.

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

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 ↓

Southern Soft 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. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the egg, milk, cornmeal, salt, and baking powder together.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking pan.

  4. Dot the top with bits of butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.

  2. Serve in the same dish with jelly, using a spoon.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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

Eggs
Binds the batter and sets with heat to give the cornbread structure.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture for a tender crumb.
Yellow cornmeal
Forms the main body and gives the cornbread its grainy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the hot oven so the cornbread rises.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a moist, soft crumb.

The step that matters

Bake for 25 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as the batter is hot, and the batter sets as it bakes. Stirring disturbs that rising and setting structure, so each stir should be quick and gentle to keep the crumb soft rather than dense.

“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

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes