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Bread

Corn-bread Without Milk

A simple cornbread made with cornmeal, eggs, butter, and boiling water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Corn-bread Without Milk

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

  1. Scald half of the cornmeal overnight with boiling water and a little salt.

  2. In the morning, combine the remaining cornmeal with the scalded portion and the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until stiff.

Bake

  1. Butter small pans and pour in the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven 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.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the main structure and bulk of the cornbread.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift, with whipped whites adding airiness to the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown and release from the pans.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites until stiff. Whites hold air when whipped, and that air gives the cornbread its lift. Folding gently keeps the air in, while stirring hard would deflate the batter and leave the bread dense.

“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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