Name: Yuller House Brown Bread
Ingredients: 2 ½ cups cornmeal; 2 ½ cups graham flour; 2 ½ cups wheat flour; ⅔ cup brown sugar; 1 teaspoon baking soda; Sour milk (enough to make a very stiff batter) or 1 heaping tablespoon baking powder and sweet milk; Butter or oil (for greasing the pan)

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Yuller House Brown Bread

Ingredients

2 ½ cups cornmeal
2 ½ cups graham flour
2 ½ cups wheat flour
⅔ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
Sour milk (enough to make a very stiff batter) or 1 heaping tablespoon baking powder and sweet milk
Butter or oil (for greasing the pan)

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, combine cornmeal, graham flour, wheat flour, and brown sugar.

Make the batter

Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and add it to the mixture.
Add sour milk to create a very stiff batter, or use baking powder and sweet milk instead.
Grease a tin bread pan and pour the batter into it.

Bake

Bake immediately without letting the batter rise for about 45-60 minutes 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.

Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Cornmeal: Gives the loaf its coarse, crumbly body and a grainy texture.
Graham flour: Adds structure and a nutty, wholegrain flavour and colour to the loaf.
Wheat flour: Provides gluten-forming structure that holds the stiff batter together.
Brown sugar: Adds sweetness and molasses flavour and helps the crust brown.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas and lift the batter.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after mixing. Baking soda starts releasing gas as soon as it meets acid. If the batter stands, much of that lift is lost, so the loaf can bake up dense rather than light.

“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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Yuller House Brown Bread