Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 cup Indian meal; 2 heaping cups rye meal; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 cup molasses; 1 pint hot water; butter for greasing

Why it works: Rye and molasses work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown 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.

Mix the batter

In a large bowl, mix the Indian meal, rye meal, salt, and baking soda until well combined.
In a separate bowl, measure out the molasses.
Pour the hot water into the dry mixture and stir until smooth.

Bake

Grease a tin bread or pudding boiler with butter.
Pour the batter into the prepared boiler.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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.

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.

Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Rye + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together348 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Molasses + buttertop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,123 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Indian meal: Provides the coarse, crumbly body and structure of the bread.
Rye meal: Adds a dense texture and a distinctive earthy flavor.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.

“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.