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Bread

Brown Bread

A cornmeal bread with molasses, sugar, and a bread sponge, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Brown Bread

Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the mush

  1. Stir corn meal into boiling water to make a good mush.

  2. Cook for a few minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and add molasses, sugar, and salt.

  4. Let it cool.

Make the dough

  1. Add bread sponge and stir in enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Mould the dough for fifteen minutes.

Rise and bake

  1. Place in baking pans to rise until light.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°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.

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Corn + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal
Forms the mush that gives the bread its body and coarse, hearty texture.
Porto rico molasses
Adds deep sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and helps the crumb brown in the oven.
Bread sponge
Provides fermentation so the dough rises and becomes light.
Flour
Gives the dough enough structure to hold its shape when moulded and baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. The bread sponge needs time to ferment and produce gas; baking before the dough has risen properly gives a dense loaf.

“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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