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Dessert

Sweet Milk Cornbread

A sweet cornmeal and flour batter baked with milk, egg, sugar, and lard or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sweet Milk Cornbread

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).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix cornmeal, flour, milk, and sugar together.

  2. Add baking powder and salt to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the melted lard or butter.

  4. Beat the egg white until stiff and fold it into the batter last.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg
Egg white beaten to stiff peaks lightens the batter and helps the cornbread rise and hold its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the cornbread to rise and become lighter in texture.
Cornmeal
Provides the main body and the characteristic grainy texture of the cornbread.
Flour
Adds structure so the cornbread holds together rather than crumbling.
Lard or butter
Adds fat for tenderness and moisture, and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white. Beaten egg white holds air that lifts the batter. Folding it in gently last, rather than stirring, keeps those air bubbles intact so the cornbread stays light.

“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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