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Fine Corn Bread

A cornbread made with cornmeal, flour, milk, eggs, butter, sugar, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Fine Corn Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA very quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the milk, cornmeal, flour, cream of tartar, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, separating the yolks and whites.

  3. Add the yolks to the batter, then mix in the butter and sugar.

  4. Whip the egg whites until firm and gently fold them into the batter.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and add it to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered tin and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter, and whipped whites add lift and a lighter crumb.
Cornmeal
Provides the grainy structure and characteristic corn flavour of the bread.
All-purpose flour
Gives the batter gluten-based structure so the crumb holds together.
Cream of tartar
An acid that reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps keep the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air only when whipped to firm peaks. Overmixing when folding deflates them, which reduces the lift the bread gets in the oven.

“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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