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Corn Bread

A quick, eggless cornbread made with sour milk, cornmeal, wheat flour, sugar, shortening, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Corn Bread

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Corn 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 the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, stir together the sugar and shortening.

  2. Mix in the sour milk and baking soda.

  3. Add the salt, cornmeal, and wheat flour. Stir until just combined; the batter should be pourable.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into hot gem pans or a small pan.

  2. Bake for about 20 minutes until golden.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + milktop 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
Provides the main body and the characteristic grainy, crumbly texture of the cornbread.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the bread holds together without eggs.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce carbon dioxide for rising.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and helps the crust brown and release from the pan.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Stir the batter until just combined. Overmixing develops gluten in the wheat flour, which can make the cornbread tough and dense. Stopping once the ingredients are combined keeps it tender while the baking soda and sour milk still give lift.

“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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