Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
Warm Graham 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).
Make the dough
In a bowl, mix the sour cream, sugar, and baking soda.
Gradually add graham flour until the mixture is a little stiffer than cake dough.
Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.
Bake and cool
Bake for 30 minutes.
Turn out onto a board to cool.
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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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,481 recipes
Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sour cream
- Supplies moisture and acidity, and its tang reacts with the baking soda to lift the loaf.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acid to release carbon dioxide, which makes the bread rise.
- Graham flour
- Provides the main structure and the coarse, nutty texture of the bread.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
The step that matters
Gradually add graham flour until the mixture is a little stiffer than cake dough.. Graham flour absorbs liquid at its own rate, and bran particles vary from batch to batch. Adding it gradually lets you judge the texture, since too much flour makes the bread dense and dry, while too little leaves it gummy.
“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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