Skip to main content
Main

Corn Bread

A quick oven-baked corn bread made with eggs, lard, buttermilk, molasses, baking soda, baking powder, wheat flour, cornmeal, butter, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Corn Bread

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the lard.

  2. Mix it with the salt and molasses into the beaten eggs.

  3. Mix the baking soda with the buttermilk, then add it to the egg mixture.

  4. Stir in the wheat flour.

  5. Add enough yellow cornmeal to create a thick batter.

Bake

  1. In a wide baking pan, melt the butter.

  2. Pour in the batter, ensuring it is no more than ½ inch thick.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  4. When the batter begins to warm through, pour over the whipped cream and bake quickly.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Buttermilk + creamtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Buttermilk + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and tang, and reacts with the baking soda to help the cornbread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, lightening the batter.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten and structure, giving the cornbread a more tender crumb.
Yellow cornmeal
Forms the body of the batter and gives the cornbread its corn flavor and texture.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.

The step that matters

Pour the batter no more than ½ inch thick. A thin layer of batter bakes through quickly and evenly, while a thicker one can stay gummy in the center and brown unevenly on top.

“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.

More cornbread recipes

Steamed 78Rye 18Southern 15Molasses 14Indian 11Virginia 11 See all 732 →

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesWheat GruelWheat Gruel6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes