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Light Corn Bread

A batter of cornmeal, graham flour, molasses, yeast, and water is steamed to make a light cornbread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,165 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Light Corn Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Pour boiling water over the corn meal until thoroughly scalded.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Add graham flour, molasses, yeast, salt, and enough water to make a batter similar to muffin batter.

Rise and steam

  1. Place the mixture in a well-greased bucket or mold and let it rise for two hours or more.

  2. Steam the batter for three 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. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 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

Corn meal
Forms the bulk of the bread; scalding softens its starch for a moist, tender crumb.
Graham flour
Adds structure and a coarser, wholesome texture to the batter.
Sugar or molasses
Adds sweetness and moisture, and feeds the yeast.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, which makes the batter rise and turn lighter.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise fully. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to lighten the batter. Rising too briefly leaves the cornbread dense and heavy after steaming.

“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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