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Bread

Spoon Bread

A cornmeal bread baked with eggs, butter, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Spoon Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the cornmeal with boiling water in a bowl.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, salt, melted butter, baking powder, and sweet milk, then mix until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the body of the bread and gives it a soft, tender crumb when scalded.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give structure to the spoon bread.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the spoon bread tender as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a moist, rich texture.

The step that matters

Scald the cornmeal with boiling water. Pouring boiling water over the cornmeal hydrates the starch and softens the grains, so the batter bakes to a smooth, tender texture rather than a gritty one.

“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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