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Loaf Corn-bread

A loaf of cornbread made with Indian meal, flour, eggs, milk, shortening, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Loaf Corn-bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs thoroughly, separating the whites and yolks.

  2. Melt the shortening.

  3. Sift the baking powder into the Indian meal and flour while dry.

  4. Combine the dry ingredients with the melted shortening and beaten eggs.

  5. Beat the mixture hard for one minute.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered mold.

  2. Bake for about 30 minutes 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter together.
Indian meal
Forms the main body of the bread and gives it its corn flavor.
Flour
Adds structure so the cornbread holds its shape after baking.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the dry ingredients into a batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing it to rise and become light.
Cottolene or vegetable shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and a moist crumb.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture hard for one minute. Vigorous beating incorporates air and helps the batter rise evenly, but the leavening is released as soon as the batter is mixed, so the batter should go into the mold promptly.

“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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