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Bread

Cornmeal Souffle Bread

A baked cornmeal soufflé bread made with milk, cornmeal, butter, eggs, and baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cornmeal Souffle Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the cornmeal base

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler until it reaches the scalding point.

  2. Gradually add the cornmeal and salt, cooking over hot water until the mixture is smooth and no longer tastes raw.

  3. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

  4. Stir in the butter and the egg yolks, one at a time.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the soufflé into a buttered baking dish, place it in a pan of hot water, and bake at 400°F (200°C) 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Milk
Provides liquid that cooks with the cornmeal into a smooth, thick base.
Cornmeal
Thickens the milk as it cooks and gives the bread its body and corn flavour.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the base while enriching its texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they lighten the batter and make it rise as a soufflé.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, mellow flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten until stiff and folded gently so the air bubbles are kept. Deflating them by stirring hard leaves a dense bread instead of a light, risen soufflé.

“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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