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Spider Corn Bread

A cornmeal-based bread with eggs, milk, butter, and baking soda, baked in a hot pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spider Corn Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, mix together cornmeal, flour, sugar, and salt.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs and add sour milk and sweet milk with dissolved baking soda.

  4. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a frying pan with butter and heat it until very hot.

  2. Pour the batter into the hot pan without stirring.

  3. Carefully pour in another cup of sweet milk on top of the batter.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes and serve immediately.

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. Flour + buttertop 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the cornbread rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and the characteristic grainy texture of the cornbread.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-forming protein that gives the crumb more structure and holding power.
Butter
Adds fat that helps prevent sticking and promotes browning on the crust.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the hot pan without stirring. A preheated, greased pan starts the crust setting on contact, which helps the bottom brown and release cleanly. Stirring after pouring would knock out air and deflate the batter, which is why the batter goes in undisturbed.

“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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