Why it works: Wheat and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓
Mrs. B.'s 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the batter
In a large bowl, combine sour milk, eggs, lard or butter, sugar, and salt.
Add a handful of wheat flour and enough sifted corn meal to create a good batter.
Stir in the baking soda and mix thoroughly.
Bake
Pour the batter into a long dripping pan and bake until golden brown.
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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Wheat + corntop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together465 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,418 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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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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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sour milk
- Provides liquid and acidity that reacts with baking soda to lift the batter.
- Eggs
- Add structure and binding so the cornbread holds together after baking.
- Corn meal
- Forms the main body of the bread and gives its characteristic grainy texture.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the bread rise.
- Lard or butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and moisture and helps the crust brown.
The step that matters
Stir in the baking soda and mix thoroughly. Baking soda reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide. Mixing it evenly distributes the gas so the bread rises uniformly rather than in pockets or patches.
“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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