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Dessert

Southern Rice Bread

A cake made from egg, milk, cornmeal, rice, flour, baking powder, and butter, baked and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Southern Rice 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. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Add the milk, salt, cornmeal, and cold boiled rice; beat thoroughly.

  3. Sift the flour with the baking powder and add to the mixture; beat well.

  4. Stir in the extra milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into greased layer-cake pans.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Turn out one cake, spread with butter, place another on top, spread with butter, and add the third cake on top.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar and serve.

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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg
Beaten eggs add structure and help the batter hold its lift as it bakes.
Cornmeal
Gives the cakes a coarse, slightly crumbly texture and a mild corn flavor.
Cold boiled rice
Adds body and moistness to the batter, giving the crumb a tender bite.
Flour
Provides structure so the batter sets into a cake rather than staying loose.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cakes to rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake in a hot oven. Baking powder starts producing gas as soon as it is wet, so the batter should go into a hot oven promptly. Enough heat sets the structure before the rising gas escapes, which keeps the layers light.

“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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