Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups rye meal; 1 cup corn meal; 1 cup flour; ½ cup molasses; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon salt; 2½ cups milk or a mix of milk and water; 1 cup whole raisins (optional)

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

In a large bowl, combine rye meal, corn meal, flour, molasses, baking soda, and salt.
Gradually stir in the milk or milk and water mixture until well combined.
If desired, fold in the raisins.

Steam and serve

Pour the mixture into a pudding boiler.
Steam for three 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rye + corntop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together182 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Rye + raisintop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye meal: Provides the dark, hearty body and characteristic flavour of the bread.
Corn meal: Adds coarse texture and a slightly sweet grainy structure to the loaf.
Flour: Gives the batter enough structure to hold together during steaming.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the bread.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Milk: Hydrates the dry grains and forms the batter that sets as it steams.

“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.