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Bread

Corn Bread

A baked bread made with cornmeal, flour, sour milk, molasses, eggs, butter, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Corn Bread

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 ↓

Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Mix and sift the cornmeal, flour, and salt together.

  3. Add the molasses and melted butter to the dry ingredients.

  4. Stir in the sour milk and beaten eggs.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in 2 tablespoons of hot water and add to the mixture.

  6. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour into a well-greased, not very shallow pan.

  2. Bake for 45 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

White cornmeal
Forms the main body and gives the cornbread its corn flavor and crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and bind the batter so the bread holds together.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help it rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a darker color to the crumb.
Melted butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour milk right away, releasing gas that lifts the batter. Dissolving it evenly and mixing it in promptly spreads the reaction through the batter, so the bread rises evenly instead of in pockets or falling flat.

“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.

More cornbread recipes

Steamed 78Rye 18Southern 15Molasses 14Indian 11Virginia 11 See all 732 →

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