Name: Indian Corn Batter Bread
Ingredients: ½ pint buttermilk; 2 cups white Indian cornmeal; ½ teaspoon baking soda; ½ cup milk; 2 eggs, well beaten; 1 teaspoon oil; Salt to taste

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 Corn Batter Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

In a bowl, stir ½ pint of buttermilk into 2 cups of white Indian cornmeal.
Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in ½ cup of milk and gradually stir it into the mixture.
Add 2 well-beaten eggs, 1 teaspoon of oil, and salt to taste.
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until brown.

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.

Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,986 recipes

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

Buttermilk: Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
White indian cornmeal: Forms the main body of the bread, giving its structure and coarse texture.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas, helping the cornbread rise.
Eggs: Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.

“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.