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Bread

Graham Bread

A yeast-leavened bread made with sweet milk, mashed potatoes, molasses, and graham flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Graham Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Boil the milk, then add the mashed potatoes, butter or lard, and salt.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the dissolved yeast.

  3. Stir in enough white flour to make a thin batter and let it rise until light.

  4. Add ½ cup molasses and enough graham flour to form a stiff dough.

  5. Place the dough in pans and let it rise again.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 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.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, helping the bread stay soft and moist.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Graham flour
Provides the bran and wholegrain structure that gives the loaf its nutty, dense texture.
White flour
Builds gluten in the starter batter, giving it the elasticity to trap rising gas.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep flavour, and helps browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise in the pans. The second rise lets yeast gas expand the stiff dough before baking. If it is underproofed the loaf will be dense; if overproofed it may collapse or lose structure in the oven.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, molasses, flour):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, molasses, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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