Name: Choice Corn Bread
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 2 cups sour milk; 2 tablespoons sugar; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 2 teaspoons baking powder; 2 teaspoons salt; 2 cups cornmeal; 1 cup unsifted graham flour

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Choice Corn Bread

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

Beat the eggs until light.
Add the sour milk.

Make the batter

Sift together the sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cornmeal.
Add the sifted mixture to the egg mixture.
Add the graham flour and mix everything together.

Bake

Bake in a well-greased corn stick pan or a pone at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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: Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they are beaten.
Sour milk: Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the cornbread rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking powder: Provides additional lift so the cornbread rises in the oven.
Cornmeal: Forms the body and characteristic texture of the cornbread.
Graham flour: Adds wheat structure and a slightly nutty flavour to the batter.

“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.