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Bread

Graham Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with milk, water, molasses, sugar, baking soda, salt, Graham flour, and butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid base

  1. Combine 1 quart of milk and 1 quart of water in a small bowl.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of molasses, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  3. Mix well and stiffen with Graham flour until the mixture is a little stiffer than cake batter.

  4. Let the mixture rise like other loaves.

Make the batter

  1. Mix 1½ cups of water or milk with a small piece of butter or lard and enough Graham flour to make a thick batter.

  2. Add ½ cup of good yeast and let it rise overnight.

  3. Dissolve ½ teaspoon of baking soda in a little water.

  4. Add ½ cup of molasses to the dissolved baking soda mixture.

  5. Stir this mixture into the bread batter.

  6. Mix until the batter is soft.

Bake

  1. Place the batter in a baking tin to rise.

  2. Bake thoroughly.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure that stiffens the batter into a loaf.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the batter rise and lighten.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acid to add lift and deepen browning.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.

The step that matters

Bake thoroughly. Bread needs enough heat and time for the starches to set and the crumb to dry out; underbaking leaves a gummy, dense center.

“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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