Skip to main content
Dessert

Catskill Corn Bread

A moist cornbread made with milk, Indian meal, baking powder, brown sugar, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Catskill Corn Bread

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

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in enough Indian meal to create a thin mush.

Make the batter

  1. Add the baking powder, brown sugar, and beaten eggs; mix well.

  2. Incorporate enough meal to thicken the mixture to the consistency of pound cake.

  3. Add salt to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Scalded milk forms the liquid base that hydrates the meal and gives the batter its moisture.
Indian meal
Cornmeal forms the body of the bread, giving it its structure and corn flavor.
Eggs
Beaten eggs bind the batter and help set it into a tender, cohesive crumb.
Royal baking powder
Leavening that releases gas in the batter, helping the bread rise and become light.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a mild molasses flavor that complements the corn and promotes browning.

The step that matters

Thickening the batter with meal. The batter should reach the thickness of pound cake before baking. Too thin and the bread may be dense and soggy; too thick and it may bake dry and crumbly. Adding meal gradually lets you judge the consistency.

“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.

More cornbread recipes

Steamed 78Rye 18Southern 15Molasses 14Indian 11Virginia 11 See all 732 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes