Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 4 cups sour milk; 4 cups cornmeal; 2 cups rye meal; ½ cup New Orleans molasses; soda (to sweeten milk)

Why it works: Milk and rye work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. 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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Mix and bake

In a large bowl, combine sour milk, cornmeal, rye meal, and molasses.
Add soda to sweeten the milk as desired.
Pour the mixture into a deep baking dish.
Bake for 2 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.

Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together918 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,243 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal: Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the cornbread its structure and grainy texture.
Sour milk: Adds moisture and tang, and its acidity works with the soda.
Rye meal: Adds a denser texture and a more robust, earthy flavour to the batter.
New orleans molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.

“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.