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Bread

Egg Bread or Corn Pone

A simple cornbread made with cornmeal, flour, egg, butter, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Egg Bread or Corn Pone

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 oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, butter, sugar (if using), and the yolk of the egg.

  2. Add the corn meal, salt, and sweet milk to the mixture.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg white.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cornbread together as it bakes.
Egg
Adds structure and richness; the beaten white helps the batter rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds fat for tender texture and rich flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to lift the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that makes it rise.
Sweet milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and cornmeal into a batter.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg white. Folding gently keeps the air whipped into the egg white, which helps the cornbread rise and stay light. Stirring vigorously would deflate the foam and produce a denser result.

“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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