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Bread

Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with sour milk, bread crumbs, molasses, corn meal, salt, and baking soda.

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

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.

Mix

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, bread crumbs, molasses, salt, corn meal, and baking soda, and mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming dish.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 2 hours.

  2. After steaming, bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until a crust forms, about 30 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.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + corntop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together547 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Molasses + corntop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together644 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

Sour milk
Acidity reacts with baking soda to lift the batter and add tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that makes the bread rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the bread.
Corn meal
Gives the bread a coarse, crumbly texture and its characteristic flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the loaf a softer structure.

The step that matters

Steam for 2 hours. Steaming keeps the loaf moist while the baking soda and sour milk leaven it. Water in the steamer must keep boiling so the bread cooks evenly without drying out or turning dense.

“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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