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Bread

Breakfast Bread

A sweet, buttery bread made with flour, cornmeal, sugar, eggs, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Breakfast Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Gradually stir in the milk.

  4. Sift the flour, cornmeal, and baking powder together two or three times.

  5. Stir the sifted mixture into the wet ingredients, beating thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour into well buttered pans and bake for 30 minutes.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the bread together as it sets.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the bread rises and turns light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the creamed batter hold air.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the crust.
Milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter its moisture.

The step that matters

Sift the dry ingredients and beat the batter thoroughly. Sifting spreads the baking powder evenly so the bread rises uniformly. Thorough beating develops gluten and structure, while the pan must be well buttered so the loaf releases cleanly.

“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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