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Bread

Indian Bread

A cornmeal bread made with buttermilk, sweet milk, eggs, lard, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg 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 ↓

Indian Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Combine buttermilk and sweet milk in a bowl.

  3. Add baking soda to the mixture.

  4. Beat the eggs until combined.

  5. Pour the milk mixture into the eggs while stirring gently.

  6. Sprinkle cornmeal into the batter and mix thoroughly.

  7. Add salt to the batter and mix well.

Bake

  1. Melt lard in a baking pan.

  2. Pour batter into the pan.

  3. Bake until the bread is crisp and light.

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 + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,986 recipes

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

  3. Buttermilk + milktop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness so the bread holds its shape.
Buttermilk
Adds acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the bread rise and gives a tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the bread and gives it its grainy texture.
Lard
Adds fat that helps the bread brown and keeps the crust crisp.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda to the buttermilk mixture. Baking soda needs an acid to react with and produce carbon dioxide. Its reaction with the buttermilk is what lifts the batter, so the baking soda must be mixed in promptly and the batter baked without delay so the gas is not lost.

“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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