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 ↓
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 the batter
Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix sour milk, eggs, butter, baking soda, and salt.
Gradually add cornmeal until the batter can run off a spoon.
Bake
Pour the batter into pie pans, about 1 inch thick.
Bake until golden brown.
Variations
For a thinner version, use sweet milk and 3 teaspoons baking powder.
Fry as griddle cakes.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour milk's acid to make the cornbread rise.
- Cornmeal
- Forms the body of the bread and gives it its characteristic grainy texture.
The step that matters
Gradually add cornmeal until the batter can run off a spoon. Cornmeal absorbs liquid as it sits, so the batter's thickness changes quickly. Adding it gradually lets you stop at a pourable consistency; too much makes a dense, dry loaf, while too little makes it spread thin and bake unevenly.
“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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