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Bread

Corn Meal Batter Bread

A batter bread made from cornmeal, buttermilk, eggs, lard, salt and baking soda, baked in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and egg 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 ↓

Corn Meal Batter Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cornmeal

  1. Scald the cornmeal with a little boiling water.

Make the batter

  1. Add the buttermilk, melted lard, salt, and well-beaten eggs.

  2. Stir in the baking soda.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Buttermilk + eggtop 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

Cornmeal
Forms the bread's main structure and gives it a coarse, grainy texture.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acid to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda and bake promptly. Baking soda starts reacting with the buttermilk's acid as soon as it is mixed in. The gas it releases lifts the batter, so delaying the oven can leave the bread flatter and denser.

“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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