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Bread

Splendid Brown Bread

A dense bread made with sour milk, molasses, lard, baking soda, salt, and Graham flour, baked in a tin pail.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Splendid Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Mix the batter

  1. Combine sour milk, molasses, lard, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Add Graham flour gradually until a stiff batter is achieved.

Steam and bake

  1. Transfer the batter into a 2-quart tin pail and cover with the lid.

  2. Suspend the pail in a pot of boiling water using a stick through the handle.

  3. Boil for 3 hours.

  4. Remove the pail from the boiling water.

  5. Take off the lid.

  6. Bake the batter in the same pail in a cool oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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 baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk and molasses to leaven the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color to the bread.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Graham flour
Provides the structure and body of the batter, along with its nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Keep the pail covered and the water boiling during steaming. Steam trapped inside the covered pail cooks and raises the batter. If the lid is lifted or the water stops boiling, the steam escapes and the bread can turn out heavy and underdone.

“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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