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Tip-top Corn-bread

A quick baked cornbread made with cornmeal, flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Tip-top 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.

Prepare

  1. Stir together 2 cups of cornmeal, 2 cups of milk, and a beaten egg in a bowl.

  2. Add 2 teaspoons of sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt to the mixture.

  3. Rub together ½ cup of soft butter and ½ cup of flour in another bowl.

  4. Dust a little of the butter‑flour mixture over the bottom of a well‑greased pan.

  5. Mix the remaining ½ cup of flour with 3 teaspoons of baking powder.

Bake

  1. Add the flour‑baking powder mixture to the batter, stirring quickly.

  2. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

  3. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the bread and gives it its grainy texture.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and helps the crust brown.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, so the bread rises and becomes light.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and moistens the batter.
Flour
Adds structure to the crumb so the bread holds together.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and baking powder into the batter quickly. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it gets wet and the batter is mixed. Stirring quickly and getting the batter into the oven promptly keeps that gas in the batter, so the cornbread rises well instead of going flat.

“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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