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Buttermilk Corn Bread

A quick baked cornbread made with buttermilk, sour cream, cornmeal, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,973 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine buttermilk, sour cream, and beaten egg.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda.

  3. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake immediately.

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. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Buttermilk + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Buttermilk
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with the baking soda to help the cornbread rise.
Sour cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the cornbread a tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the structure and gives the cornbread its characteristic texture and flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift as the batter heats in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten and gives a tough, dense cornbread, while the leavening gases that lift the batter are released quickly, so stop stirring once no dry streaks remain.

“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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