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Bread

Terhune Corn Bread

A cornmeal and flour bread baked with sour milk, lard, and baking soda.

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

Terhune 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Sift together three times.

  3. In another bowl, mix the sour milk and lard until well combined.

Mix and bake

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or 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.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 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

White cornmeal
Provides the main body and the characteristic corn flavour and grain of the cornbread.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the cornbread holds together better than cornmeal alone.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Supplies liquid and acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cornbread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk or buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and contributes to browning and richness.

The step that matters

Stir the batter until just combined. Once the dry ingredients meet the liquid, gluten from the flour begins to form. Overmixing toughens the crumb, and the baking soda's rising power starts working right away, so the batter should go into the oven promptly.

“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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