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Bread

Indian Corn Bread

A quick baked cornmeal bread with eggs, buttermilk, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,986 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Indian Corn 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. In a large bowl, combine the Indian meal and salt.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and enough sour buttermilk to make a stiff batter.

  3. Mix well, then dissolve the baking soda in warm water and stir it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into well-greased pans, ensuring it is about 2 inches thick.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes or 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 + buttermilktop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Forms the main body of the bread, giving it its structure and coarse texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sour buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas, helping the bread rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Stir the baking soda into the batter evenly. Baking soda only leavens when it reacts with an acid such as sour buttermilk. If it is not fully dissolved and mixed through, pockets of unreacted soda can taste bitter and the bread will rise unevenly.

“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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