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Bread

Soft Batter Bread

A moist cornmeal bread made with milk, sour cream, eggs, butter, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Soft Batter Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the mush

  1. Heat the milk in a pot until it is near boiling.

  2. Gradually add the corn meal while stirring until it becomes a smooth, thin mush; do not let it boil.

  3. Stir in the salt and butter, then let the mixture cool.

Mix and bake

  1. Once cooled, mix in the sour cream that has the baking soda dissolved in it, followed by the beaten eggs.

  2. Pour the batter into a baking dish and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  3. Cover until it has risen and is nearly done, then uncover to brown the top.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cornbread sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the cornbread rise.
Sour cream
Adds moisture, richness and acidity to the batter.
Corn meal
Forms the base of the batter and gives the cornbread its texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Cool the mush before adding the sour cream and eggs. Adding the baking soda-sour cream mixture and eggs to hot mush can cause the leavening to react too quickly and the eggs to scramble, so the batter may rise poorly and turn out uneven in texture.

“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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