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 ↓
Spoon 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.
Make the batter
Stir enough white cornmeal into 1 pint of milk to make a thin batter.
Add 1 teaspoon of Magic Baking Powder, ¼ teaspoon salt, and the beaten egg whites and yolks.
Bake and serve
Pour the mixture into a baking dish and smooth the top with a broad, flat knife.
Dot the top with pieces of butter.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) and serve in the dish with a spoon.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Eggs
- Add structure and lift to the batter as they set during baking.
- White cornmeal
- Forms the body of the batter, giving the bread its soft, spoonable texture.
- Magic baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping it rise and become light.
- Milk
- Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
The step that matters
Add the beaten egg whites and yolks. Egg whites hold air that gives spoon bread its lift, so they should be beaten until foamy and folded in gently. Deflating them with heavy mixing loses the rise the baking powder and eggs provide.
“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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