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Bread

Spoon Bread

A quick baked cornmeal bread made with eggs, milk, butter, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Spoon Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Sift together the cornmeal, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light and stir them into the dry ingredients.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. Turn the mixture into a well-buttered baking dish that holds 3 pints.

  5. Add the butter cut into small pieces on top.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

  2. Stir often until the bread begins to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve with a spoon from the baking dish and enjoy 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and lift, giving the bread a light, airy crumb.
Cornmeal
Cornmeal forms the body of the bread, and its starch thickens as it heats.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the bread rise in the oven.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and keeps the bread moist.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and flavor as it melts.

The step that matters

Stir often until the bread begins to thicken. Cornmeal starch thickens as it heats, and stirring keeps the batter from settling and cooking unevenly around the edges.

“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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