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Boiled Corn Bread

A boiled corn bread made with milk, buttermilk, molasses, cornmeal, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boiled Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the baking soda and cream of tartar into the flour.

  2. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly together.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered tin pail.

Steam

  1. Cover the pail tightly and place it in a kettle two-thirds full of boiling water.

  2. Cover the kettle and boil steadily for three hours, replenishing with boiling water as needed.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with 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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that activates the baking soda for rising and a tender crumb.
Buttermilk or sour cream
Adds acidity and moisture, helping the leavening react and keeping the bread tender.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark color to the bread.
Cornmeal
Gives the bread its characteristic grainy texture and structure.
Flour
Provides gluten and structure so the steamed loaf holds together.

The step that matters

Keep the kettle boiling steadily and topped up. Steam cooks the batter gently and evenly. If the water drops low or stops boiling, the heat falls and the bread cooks unevenly.

“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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