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Bread

Raised Corn Bread

A leavened cornbread made with milk or water, cornmeal, yeast, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Heat 2 cups of milk or water until boiling.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 tablespoon of sugar.

  3. Stir in 1 cup of sifted cornmeal and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

  5. Once cool, add the dissolved yeast cake and cover.

  6. Set in a cool place to rise overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, stir in 1 cup of cornmeal and enough white or whole wheat flour.

  2. Knead the dough thoroughly.

  3. Grease a bread pan and place the dough inside.

  4. Let it rise slowly until doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Shape into loaves, let rise again until twice the size, and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the loaf and gives it its corn flavour and coarse, crumbly texture.
Yeast cake
Ferments the sponge, producing gas that makes the loaf rise and become airy.
White or whole wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein so the dough holds its shape and rises well.
Milk or water
Hydrates the cornmeal and flour so the dough can form and ferment.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Overnight rise of the cooled sponge. The sponge must be cool before the yeast is added, since heat kills yeast. Slow, cool fermentation builds flavour and lift before the dough is shaped.

“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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