Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Corn-meal
Ingredients
Directions
Make the pudding
Pour ½ pound of white cornmeal into 1 quart of boiling water and cook slowly.
Once cooled, add the yolks of 4 eggs, ¼ teaspoon salt, and Lahmann's Nährsalz.
Gently fold in the well-beaten egg whites.
Bake and serve
Transfer the mixture to a well-greased pan, cover with butter and grated bread crumbs.
Boil in hot water for about 1 hour.
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.
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Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,345 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Corn + breadtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together547 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- White cornmeal
- Forms the thick body of the pudding as it cooks in boiling water.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help bind the pudding once cooled.
- Egg whites
- Folded in to lighten the mixture and give it a tender, airy texture.
The step that matters
Folding in the egg whites. Beaten egg whites trap air that lifts the pudding while it cooks. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard would deflate the whites and leave a denser pudding.
“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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