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White Corn Bread

A simple batter of cornmeal, egg, butter, milk, and boiling water baked into a thin loaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

White Corn Bread

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.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the cornmeal with boiling water until thoroughly mixed.

  2. Add butter and the beaten egg to the mixture.

  3. Stir in enough milk to make the batter thin enough to pour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a pan, ensuring it is about 1 inch thick.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. 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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the bread and gives it its grainy structure and corn flavor.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor and helps the crust brown.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Scalding the cornmeal with boiling water. Boiling water must be fully worked into the cornmeal so the starch hydrates evenly; unhydrated pockets stay dry and gritty after baking.

“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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