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Bread

Corn Bread

A cornmeal bread made with a bread sponge, flour, salt, and water, baked for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Corn Bread

Why it works: Bread and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Corn Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the dough

  1. Combine the cornmeal and bread sponge in a large bowl.

  2. Add enough water to wet the mixture thoroughly.

  3. Stir in the flour and salt.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

  2. Knead the dough well, then place it in the oven.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the dough and gives the cornbread its coarse, crumbly texture.
Bread sponge
Fermented starter that makes the dough rise and adds flavour.
Flour
Its proteins form gluten, giving the dough more structure and chew.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled in size. The rise lets the fermenting sponge produce gas that lightens the dough. Stopping early leaves a dense loaf, while letting it over-ferment can make the dough collapse and taste sour.

“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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