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Tennessee Corn Bread

A quick oven-baked cornbread made with buttermilk, cornmeal, lard, egg, salt, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Tennessee 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 the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg and mix in the salt and buttermilk.

  3. Add the baking soda and lard, then stir in enough cornmeal to create a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased iron gem pans.

  2. Bake until golden 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.

  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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the cornbread.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the crust brown in the pan.
Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the cornbread and gives it its grainy texture.

The step that matters

Stir in the cornmeal only until the batter is stiff. Enough cornmeal is needed for a stiff batter that holds its shape. Batter that is too thin spreads and bakes flat and dense, so the amount must be judged by consistency rather than measured as a fixed quantity.

“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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