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Dessert

Quick Graham Bread

A quick, batter-based bread made with sour milk, molasses, baking soda, salt, and graham flour, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Quick 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.

Mix the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water.

  2. Stir the dissolved soda into the sour milk.

  3. Add the molasses and salt.

  4. Mix in enough graham flour to form a batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased pan.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk, releasing carbon dioxide that makes the bread rise.
Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the loaf as it forms the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the bread.

The step that matters

Stirring the dissolved soda into the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react with. Mixing it promptly into the sour milk lets the carbon dioxide form while the batter can still trap it, so the loaf rises instead of going flat.

“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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