Skip to main content
Main

Southern Batter Bread

A quick batter bread made with cornmeal, eggs, milk, and shortening, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In another bowl, sift together the cornmeal, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Stir in enough milk (or a mixture of milk and water) to make 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 golden.

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 they set in the oven.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the bread, giving its grainy, sturdy texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the bread rise and become light.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal into a pourable batter and adds moisture and browning-friendly sugars.
Shortening
Adds fat that crisps the crust and keeps the bread tender.

The step that matters

Melt the shortening in a hot pan. The pan must be hot and the fat melted before the batter goes in. Hot fat sears the bottom and edges at once, forming a crisp crust that helps the bread release and brown evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes