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Baked Indian Bread

A sweet bread made with molasses, milk, flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Baked Indian 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

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, sour milk, and sweet milk.

  2. In another bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring until well combined.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk 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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the bread its coarse, crumbly texture.
All-purpose flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tenderness and moisture.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Mixing the dry ingredients in gradually and stopping once combined keeps the batter from being overworked. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the bread dense and tough.

“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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