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Mississippi Corn Bread

A quick baked corn bread made with buttermilk, eggs, butter, baking soda, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk, eggs, butter, and baking soda.

  2. Stir in cornmeal until the mixture is as thick as buckwheat batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish, forming squares about 1 inch thick.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Buttermilk + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that tenderizes the crumb and reacts with the baking soda.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cornbread sets.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that helps the cornbread rise.
Cornmeal
Provides the body and grainy structure that thickens the batter into a set crumb.

The step that matters

Stir in cornmeal until the batter is thick. Cornmeal soaks up liquid and sets the structure. Too little leaves a loose, gummy batter that does not hold its shape, while the baking soda needs to react quickly with the acidic buttermilk, so the batter should be mixed and baked without long delay.

“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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