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Bread

Brown Bread

A sweet bread made with corn meal, flour, molasses, and sweet milk, baked in a greased dish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Brown Bread

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, corn meal, and flour.

  2. Stir in molasses, salt, and baking soda until well mixed.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  4. Cover and boil for five hours.

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.

  1. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour 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

Corn meal
Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the cornbread.
Graham flour
Adds structure and a nutty, wholesome flavor through its bran and germ particles.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness that promotes browning.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that helps the bread rise.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the dry ingredients and helps form the batter's structure.

The step that matters

Cover and boil for five hours. Long, moist cooking sets the crumb and keeps the bread from drying out. Keeping the dish covered traps steam so the heat cooks it evenly without a hard crust forming too early.

“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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