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Batter Bread

A quick batter bread made with white Indian meal, boiled rice, eggs, butter, milk, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Batter 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 ↓

Batter 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir the beaten eggs into the milk.

  2. Add the white Indian meal, salt, melted butter, and cold boiled rice.

  3. Beat well from the bottom for 2-3 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a round, shallow pan.

  2. Bake quickly at 400°F (200°C) and serve as a vegetable or with maple syrup.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. 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 indian meal
Provides the main body of the bread, setting into a firm crumb as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set, giving structure to the baked bread.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal to form a soft batter and adds moisture to the crumb.
Cold boiled rice
Adds soft, moist texture and body to the batter.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavour in the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with acidity in the batter to help it rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Beat well from the bottom for 2-3 minutes. Thorough beating mixes the eggs, meal and rice evenly so the batter sets uniformly. Under-mixing can leave dry pockets or uneven texture, while the batter's soft consistency means it should be stirred from the bottom to keep ingredients from settling.

“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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