Why it works: Flour and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Mrs. M.’s Brown Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the flour
Scald 1 pint of brown flour until thick like mush.
Add ½ cup of white flour and ½ cup of molasses.
Mix and rise
Mix in 2 teaspoons of baking powder.
Add 1 cup of yeast and water to taste.
Let the mixture stand overnight.
Shape and bake
In the morning, mix well and shape into loaves.
Bake longer than white bread.
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.
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Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,429 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
- Brown flour
- Scalding thickens the flour into a mush that forms the dense body of the loaf.
- White flour
- Adds lighter gluten structure, softening the crumb of the dense brown flour.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking to give the loaf some lift.
- Yeast
- Ferments overnight, producing gas that raises and flavors the dough.
The step that matters
Bake longer than white bread. The dense, moist dough made with molasses and brown flour needs extra time for the heat to set the crumb through to the center. Pulling it early leaves a gummy interior, and the sugars in molasses can darken the crust quickly, so watch the color as well as the time.
“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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