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Bread

Alamance Brown Bread

A moist, sweet bread made with molasses, cornmeal, and flour, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Alamance Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat together the sugar, molasses, egg, buttermilk, and baking soda.

  3. In another bowl, sift together the cornmeal, white flour, Graham flour, and salt.

Make and bake the batter

  1. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until combined.

  2. Fold in the seeded raisins.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 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

Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, sweet flavor to the bread.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas, lightening the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets during baking.
Cornmeal
Gives the bread its coarse, crumbly texture and corn flavor.
White flour
Provides the main structure that holds the loaf together.

The step that matters

Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stirring only until combined keeps the batter tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the wheat flour, which can make the bread tough and dense.

“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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