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Bread

Baked Indian Bread

A sweet, molasses-flavored bread made with flour, cornmeal, sour and sweet milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Indian 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the molasses, flour, sour milk, sweet milk, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda until well combined.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Cornmeal
Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly structure of the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang while tenderizing the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep brown color to the bread.
Flour
Adds gluten-forming structure that helps hold the loaf together.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Cornmeal-heavy batters set slowly in the center, and underbaking leaves a gummy, dense crumb. A toothpick test confirms the center has set and the starches have cooked through.

“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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