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Bread

Batter Bread

A quick batter bread made with meal, eggs, milk, butter or lard, salt, and optional baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Batter Bread

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 ↓

Batter 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).

  2. In a bowl, sift the meal and add the salt.

  3. In another bowl, beat the eggs well and stir them into the sifted meal.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter or lard and mix it into the batter.

  2. Add enough sweet milk to create a soft batter and beat until smooth.

  3. Pour the batter into bowls, muffin pans, or square pans.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until very hot and serve 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Butter + buttermilktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Meal
Forms the bulk of the batter and provides the body of the bread.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the meal and gives the batter a soft, pourable consistency.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the finished bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the batter until smooth and add enough milk for a soft batter. Eggs and meal must be fully combined so no dry pockets or lumps remain. Adding milk gradually keeps the batter pourable, so the bread bakes evenly and rises rather than turning dense.

“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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