Skip to main content
Main

Raised Corn Bread

A steamed raised cornbread made with buttermilk, yeast, bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, baking soda, salt, cornmeal, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Raised Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine buttermilk and yeast in a bowl and let it sit in a warm place overnight.

  2. In the morning, add bread crumbs, sugar, eggs, baking soda, salt, and enough cornmeal to form a moderately stiff batter. Stir well.

  3. Grease a tin pudding form or bucket and pour the batter into it.

  4. Let the batter stand for 1-2 hours until it is perfectly light.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the bucket in a pot of boiling water and steam for 1.5 to 2 hours.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Provides acidity and moisture, and reacts with baking soda to help the bread rise.
Yeast
Ferments the buttermilk mixture overnight, producing gas that leavens the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, setting as the batter steams.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce carbon dioxide, adding lift.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the loaf a tender, moist crumb.
Cornmeal
Forms the stiff batter's main structure and gives the bread its corn flavour and texture.

The step that matters

Letting the batter stand until perfectly light. Yeast gas needs time to expand the batter before steaming. Too short a rest leaves a dense loaf, while the batter must still hold its shape so the rising gas is trapped and the crumb stays open.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes