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Adirondack Cornbread

A moist 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 eggs separately.

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

  3. Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the egg whites, salt, sugar, and baking powder to the mixture. Mix thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into long biscuit tins and bake.

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
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, beaten separately and folded in, add lift and a light crumb.
All-purpose flour
Gluten and starch give the batter structure so the bread holds its shape.
Cornmeal
Provides the corn flavor and a coarser, more crumbly texture.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness, tenderness, and a softer crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the bread rise in the oven.

The step that matters

Add the egg whites and baking powder last, and mix thoroughly. Beaten egg whites trap air and baking powder releases gas; both rely on the batter being mixed enough to distribute them evenly while not deflating the foam, so the bread rises well and bakes with an even crumb.

“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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