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Southern Batter Bread

A quick bread made from eggs, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, milk or milk-water mix, and shortening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk 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 ↓

Southern Batter 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Sift the cornmeal with salt and baking powder, then add to the eggs.

  3. Stir in enough milk (or a mix of milk and water) to create a thin batter.

Bake

  1. Melt the shortening in a hot pan.

  2. Pour the batter into the hot pan.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until done.

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. Egg + milktop 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 add structure and richness as the bread sets.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the bread, giving it its grainy, sturdy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the bread rises and turns light.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and adds moisture, thinning the batter to a pourable consistency.
Shortening
Fat that crisps the crust when melted in the hot pan before the batter goes in.

The step that matters

Melt the shortening in a hot pan before pouring in the batter. Pouring batter into a hot, fat-coated pan starts the crust searing right away, so it releases cleanly and browns instead of sticking or steaming.

“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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