Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Brown Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
In a mixing bowl, combine cornmeal, rye meal, and salt.
Dissolve baking soda in cold water and stir into cold milk along with molasses.
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until combined.
Beat the batter vigorously for five minutes.
Steam and cool
Pour the batter into a well-buttered brown bread tin with a close-fitting cover.
Place the tin in a steamer over rapidly boiling water.
Steam for five hours, replenishing the water after three hours with boiling water from a kettle.
Once done, turn the bread out of the tin and let it cool.
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.
-
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
-
Rye + milktop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together918 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
-
Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together804 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together7,243 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
-
Rye + buttertop 23% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together348 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidity of the molasses to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the bread.
- Cornmeal
- Provides the coarse, crumbly body of the bread.
- Rye meal
- Adds flavour and structure, giving the bread a dense texture.
- Cold milk
- Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flours and forms the batter.
The step that matters
Steaming the bread with steady water. The tin must stay sealed and the water must keep boiling for the full five hours. Steam supplies the gentle, moist heat that cooks the dense batter through, so letting the water drop can leave the bread heavy and underbaked.
“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.
More brown bread recipes
You might also like
Cornbread345 recipes
Bread Pudding336 recipes
Milk Bread Rolls242 recipes
Potato Bread124 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.