Skip to main content
Bread

Beaten Corn Bread

A crumbly cornmeal bread made by beating the mixture with a rolling pin and baking.

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

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beaten Corn Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients.

  2. Rub the butter into the mixture using a fork.

  3. Add enough water to moisten the mixture, keeping it crumbly.

Shape

  1. Spread the mixture on a board and beat it with a rolling pin, folding it over frequently to introduce air.

  2. Roll out to about ½ inch thick and cut into small pieces.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Serve hot with plenty of butter.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

White cornmeal
Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the cornbread.
White flour
Adds structure, helping the pieces hold their shape as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that rubs into the flour and makes the crumb tender and rich.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the water. Add water only until the mixture just holds together and stays crumbly. Too much liquid hydrates the flour and cornmeal heavily, making the texture dense and sticky instead of light and crumbly.

“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 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipes