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 ↓
Corn Bread Loaf
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Mix the salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar with the flour and cornmeal.
Cream the butter in a separate bowl.
Beat the sugar and eggs together until well combined.
Make and bake the batter
Add the butter mixture to the dry ingredients.
Stir in the milk and beat the entire mixture for a few minutes.
Pour the batter into round sheet-iron pans that are 4 inches deep.
Bake until the loaf is firm and golden.
Cut the loaf pie-fashion when served.
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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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness to the crumb.
- Cream of tartar
- Reacts with baking soda to produce carbon dioxide, helping the cornbread rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to leaven the batter and aid browning.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the crumb.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cornbread and helps the crust brown.
- Milk
- Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and cornmeal into a batter.
The step that matters
Beat the batter for a few minutes after adding the milk. Beating develops gluten in the flour, giving the loaf more structure. The leavening reaction starts once the wet and dry ingredients meet, so the batter should go into the oven promptly to keep the rise.
“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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