Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Batter Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Boil 1 cup of milk and pour it over 1 pint of cornmeal with the lard.
Beat the eggs and mix them into the cornmeal.
Add the remaining 1 cup of cold milk and enough cornmeal to achieve a thin batter.
Bake
Bake in earthen pans for 30 minutes before adding light bread.
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.
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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 batter and gives the bread its main structure and corn flavour.
- Milk
- Hydrates the cornmeal, so boiling part of it helps the starch swell and softens the crumb.
- Lard
- Adds fat, which gives tenderness and richness to the crumb.
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
The step that matters
Boiling the first cup of milk and pouring it over the cornmeal. Hot liquid swells and gelatinises the cornmeal starch before baking. Using cold liquid alone would leave the grains partly raw and the texture gritty and crumbly.
“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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