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Brown Bread with Compressed Yeast Cake

A brown bread made with compressed yeast cake, cornmeal, molasses, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and wheat 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 Bread with Compressed Yeast Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the mush

  1. Stir cornmeal into boiling water.

  2. Cook for a few minutes while stirring to prevent burning.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Add molasses, sugar, lard, and salt.

  5. Let cool.

Make the dough

  1. Soak the yeast cake in tepid water.

  2. Add the soaked yeast cake to the mixture.

  3. Sift in wheat flour until the dough is stiff enough to mold without sticking.

  4. Mold the dough for twenty minutes.

  5. Place the dough in a bowl to rise overnight in a warm room.

  6. In the morning, mold down the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in baking tins.

  3. Let the loaves rise.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for one 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. Walnut + wheattop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the thick mush that gives the bread its body and crumb.
Porto rico molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the loaves.
Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten structure so the stiff dough holds its shape.
Lard
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise overnight in a warm room. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas; a cool room slows fermentation and can leave the loaves dense.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, sugar, wheat, flour. 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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