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Raised Corn Bread

A yeast‑raised bread made with cornmeal, milk or cooking water, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Corn 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.

Make the sponge

  1. Heat the milk or potato/rice cooking water until boiling.

  2. Add salt and sugar, then stir in cornmeal and cook for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Dissolve the yeast cake in lukewarm water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Cover and let rise in a cool place overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, stir in additional cornmeal and enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Knead the dough thoroughly.

  3. Grease a bread pan and place the dough inside.

  4. Let it rise until doubled in size, then shape into loaves.

  5. Allow the loaves to rise until twice their size.

  6. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 bulk of the crumb and gives the bread its characteristic texture and corn flavour.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide during the long rise, lightening the dense cornmeal mixture.
Milk or potato/rice cooking water
Liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and helps it form a cohesive, workable dough.
White flour or whole wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein so the dough holds its shape and rises well.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and contributes sweetness and some browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Overnight cool rise of the sponge. Cornmeal has no gluten, so the dough depends on yeast activity and proper proofing for lift. Letting the mixture cool before adding yeast protects the yeast from heat damage, and a cool, slow rise develops flavour without over-fermenting.

“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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