Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 3 cups brown flour; 2 teaspoons baking soda; 1 teaspoon salt; ⅔ cup molasses; buttermilk or sour milk (enough to make a batter like pound cake)

Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

3 cups brown flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
⅔ cup molasses
buttermilk or sour milk (enough to make a batter like pound cake)

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, mix the brown flour with baking soda and salt.
Stir in the molasses.
Add enough buttermilk or sour milk to create a batter that can drop from a spoon.

Steam and bake

Steam the mixture for 3 hours.
Bake for 15 minutes.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 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

Brown flour: Provides the bulk and structure of the loaf.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk or molasses to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.
Buttermilk or sour milk: Supplies liquid to form the batter and its acidity activates the baking soda.

“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.