Name: Corn Bread
Ingredients: 4 cups cornmeal; 2 cups all-purpose flour; 1 cup sweet milk; 2 cups sour milk; 1 tablespoon shortening; 1 heaping teaspoon baking soda; 1 tablespoon coarse sea salt; ½ cup sugar

Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the batter

In a large bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, sweet milk, sour milk, shortening, baking soda, salt, and sugar, then mix until well combined.

Steam and bake

Steam the mixture for 2 hours.
After steaming, bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Flour and milk 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: Provides the main structure and the characteristic coarse, crumbly texture.
All-purpose flour: Adds structure and helps hold the bread together.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to help the cornbread rise.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.
Shortening: Adds fat that softens the crumb and keeps it tender.

“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.