Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓
Corn Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Pare and boil the potato until tender.
Scald the milk in a saucepan.
Sift the cornmeal into a bowl, add the salt and butter, then pour the hot milk over it and beat until smooth.
Drain and mash the potato, then stir it into the batter and let the mixture cool to lukewarm.
Dissolve the yeast in 2 tablespoons of lukewarm water and stir it into the batter.
Sift in enough spring wheat flour to make a medium stiffness dough.
Knead the dough for a few moments until smooth, then place it in a greased bowl.
Grease the top of the dough, cover it, and let it rise in a moderately warm place until it has doubled in size.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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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Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,418 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together235 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Potato + milktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,373 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, wheat, flour):
- Potatothe original
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Leekfits less well
- Arrowrootfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, wheat, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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