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Bread

The Poughkeepsie Seer's Indian Bannock

A cornmeal-based bread baked with milk, salt, butter, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

The Poughkeepsie Seer's Indian Bannock

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk and scald the corn meal thoroughly.

  2. Add salt, melted butter, and well-beaten eggs to the mixture.

  3. Thin the batter with cold milk.

Bake

  1. Bake in shallow pans until brown.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 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

Corn meal
Forms the body of the bannock, as its starch thickens and sets when scalded in hot milk.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firmly as it bakes.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the corn meal and keeps the bread moist.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer crumb and richer flavour.

The step that matters

Scald the corn meal thoroughly. Pouring boiling milk over the corn meal gelatinizes its starch and softens the grain. If it is not fully scalded, the batter stays gritty and the bannock bakes up dense and uneven.

“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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