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Bread

White Coen Bkead

A simple cornmeal bread baked with butter, egg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

White Coen Bkead

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Add the butter and beaten egg to the mixture.

  3. Stir in enough milk to make a batter that flows easily.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a pan, ensuring it is about 1 inch thick.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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 + eggtop 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 base structure of the bread and gives it its grainy texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps the bread set as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and sets the batter's consistency so it pours easily.

The step that matters

Stir in enough milk for a flowing batter. Cornmeal absorbs liquid slowly, so the batter needs enough milk to hydrate the starch evenly. A batter that is too thick bakes dense and dry, while a fluid batter sets into an even, moist crumb 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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