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Bread

Virginia Spoon Bread

A quick bread made with cornmeal, eggs, milk, butter, baking soda or powder, and salt.

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

Virginia Spoon Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and add ½ pint of milk, then stir in the cornmeal.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in ½ cup of boiling water and stir well.

  3. Add the remaining milk and the butter to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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.
Cornmeal
Provides the body and tender, spoonable texture of the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the cornmeal for a soft crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in boiling water. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved and mixed evenly through the batter so it reacts uniformly with the acid in the sour milk. Uneven mixing leaves pockets of gas and uneven rise.

“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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