Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups sour cream; ¾ cup sugar; ½ cup molasses; 1 cup wheat flour; 2 cups graham flour; 2 teaspoons baking soda; 1 teaspoon salt; handful of raisins

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 ↓

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 together the sour cream, sugar, and molasses.
Add the wheat flour, graham flour, baking soda, salt, and raisins, then stir until combined.
Pour the batter into a pan.
Let it rise for one hour.

Bake

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Bake for about 30-40 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.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 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

Sour cream: Adds acidity and moisture, tenderising the crumb and reacting with the baking soda.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour cream and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Molasses: Adds moisture, dark colour and a rich, caramel-like sweetness.
Graham flour: Provides the bulk of the structure and the coarse, nutty texture of the bread.
Sugar: Sweetens the bread and helps it brown during baking.

“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.