Name: Mush Bread
Ingredients: 1 quart stiff mush; 2 eggs, well beaten; 1 cup sweet milk or cream

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Mush Bread

Ingredients

1 quart stiff mush
2 eggs, well beaten
1 cup sweet milk or cream

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 bowl, combine the stiff mush, beaten eggs, and sweet milk or cream, and mix well until fully combined.
Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

Bake

Bake in the oven until golden brown, similar to ordinary corn bread.

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.

Egg + milktop 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

Stiff mush: Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the bread its body.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and help it set as it bakes.
Sweet milk or cream: Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.

“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.