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Virginia Spoon Bread

A quick bread made with milk, cornmeal, eggs, butter, and salt, baked at 400°F.

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

Virginia Spoon Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal and salt, and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Beat in the butter and ½ cup cold milk into the mixture.

  4. Add the eggs and beat well again.

  5. Gradually mix in the remaining milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately from the baking dish.

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set into a soft, spoonable custard as it bakes.
Cornmeal
Provides the body and corn flavor, thickening into a soft porridge that bakes up tender.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture, so the bread stays soft rather than dry.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a tender crumb and rich flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornmeal and salt, and cook for 5 minutes. Cooking cornmeal in boiling liquid gelatinizes its starch, which thickens the batter and softens the grain. Undercooked cornmeal stays gritty and makes the final texture heavy.

“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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