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Corn-bread Without Milk

A quick cornbread made without milk, using eggs, butter, cornmeal, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Corn-bread Without Milk

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

  1. Scald half of the cornmeal overnight with boiling water and salt.

  2. In the morning, combine the remaining cornmeal with the scalded portion.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs and stir them into the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Butter small pans and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 whites, beaten to stiff peaks, add lift and a light, airy crumb.
Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the bread; scalding softens the grains for a moister, more tender texture.
Butter
Greasing the pans keeps the bread from sticking and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that gives lift. Stirring or deflating them too hard knocks the air out, leaving a denser cornbread.

“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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