Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 quart cornmeal; ½ pint flour; 1 cup molasses; 1 cup yeast; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 tablespoon salt; 4 cups cold water

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 ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, mix the cornmeal, flour, and salt.
Make a well in the center and add the molasses, yeast, and baking soda.
Stir well, then gradually add the cold water, one cup at a time.

Steam and bake

Steam the mixture for 6 to 7 hours.
After steaming, 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.

Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Cornmeal: Forms the main body and bulk of the bread's crumb.
Flour: Adds gluten-based structure that helps hold the crumb together.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep browning, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Yeast: Ferments the batter, producing gas that lifts and aerates the bread.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic molasses to release carbon dioxide, helping the bread rise.

“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.