Name: Corn Bread
Ingredients: 1 pint sour milk; 1 heaping teaspoon baking soda; 1 egg; 2 tablespoons lard; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 cup wheat flour; cornmeal (enough to make a cake-like dough)

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, combine sour milk and baking soda dissolved in a little water.
Add the egg, lard, salt, and sugar, and mix well.
Stir in the wheat flour and enough cornmeal to achieve a cake-like dough.

Bake

Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce carbon dioxide for rising.
Egg: Adds structure and binds the batter together as it sets.
Lard: Adds fat for tenderness and a moist, rich crumb.
Wheat flour: Provides gluten-based structure that holds the cornbread together.
Cornmeal: Gives the bread its characteristic corn flavor and grainy 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.