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Bread

Batter Bread

A batter bread made with cornmeal, hominy or rice, egg, salt, water, and lard or bacon fat, baked until golden.

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

Why it works: Rice and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 933 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Batter Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Add salt, cold cooked hominy or rice, and white corn meal.

  3. Stir in boiling water to make the batter as thick as heavy cream.

Bake

  1. Heat a deep baking dish until the fat smokes.

  2. Pour in the batter.

  3. Bake for 40 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Rice + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together933 recipes

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

  2. Egg + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + ricetop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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.
White corn meal
Forms the body of the bread and gives it its cornbread texture.
Hominy or rice
Adds moisture and a tender crumb to the batter.
Lard or bacon fat
Heated in the dish, it fries the batter's surface for a crisp, browned crust.

The step that matters

Heat the baking dish until the fat smokes. The batter must hit a very hot, fat-coated dish so the surface sears and forms a crust rather than sticking. A dish that is not hot enough leads to a pale, greasy bottom.

“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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