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Dessert

The Poughkeepsie Seer's Indian Bannock

A cornmeal flatbread baked with milk, butter, salt, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The Poughkeepsie Seer's Indian Bannock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Boil 1 pint of milk.

  2. Scald the cornmeal with the boiled milk.

  3. Add salt, melted butter, and beaten eggs.

  4. Thin the batter with the cold milk.

Bake

  1. Bake in shallow pans until 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.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the main body of the batter and sets as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set firmly while baking.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the cornmeal and keeps the bread moist.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavor.

The step that matters

Scalding the cornmeal with boiled milk. Hot liquid swells the cornmeal starch so the batter thickens and holds together. Cooking the starch fully before baking keeps the bread from turning gummy. Thinning with cold milk afterward brings the batter to a pourable consistency.

“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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