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Bread

Brown Nut Bread

A loaf of bread made with graham and wheat flour, sour milk, molasses, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Brown Nut Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the graham flour, wheat flour, salt, and baking soda.

  3. In another bowl, combine the sour milk and molasses, stirring until smooth.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.

  2. Fold in the broken walnuts.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased bread pan.

  4. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Wheat + walnuttop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, which lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness to the crumb.
Graham flour
Provides the bulk and the coarse, brown, slightly nutty structure of the loaf.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein that gives the loaf structure alongside the graham flour.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour, moisture and a deep flavour to the brown bread.
Broken walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, toasty flavour throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients. Mix just until combined. Overmixing develops too much gluten in the flour, making the bread tough and dense, while the baking soda's lift begins as soon as it meets the acidic milk.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, wheat, milk, molasses):

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Flaxseedfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, wheat, milk, molasses. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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