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Bread

Adirondack Cornbread

A cornbread made with eggs, milk, flour, cornmeal, butter, salt, sugar, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Adirondack Cornbread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

  2. Combine the milk, flour, cornmeal, and melted butter in a bowl.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Add the beaten egg whites, salt, sugar, and baking powder to the mixture.

  2. Mix thoroughly and pour into long biscuit tins.

  3. Bake 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. Milk + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Eggs
Whites trapped by beating add lift and an airy, light crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main starch structure that holds the cornbread together.
Cornmeal
Gives the bread its characteristic grainy texture and corn flavor.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness, moisture, and rich flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cornbread rise.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and cornmeal and adds moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are beaten until stiff and then added gently. Stirring too hard deflates them, so the cornbread bakes denser and flatter. Mix just until combined before the batter goes into the tins.

“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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