Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Brown Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sponge
Prepare 1 quart of cornmeal gruel.
Make a sponge with the gruel, unbolted flour, and yeast.
Let the sponge rise in a warm place.
Mix and shape
Once the sponge has risen, add 1 cup of molasses, a piece of lard, and salt.
Mix in nearly 4 pints of unbolted flour.
Mold the mixture into loaves.
Let the loaves rise again in a warm place.
Bake
Bake until light.
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.
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together10,429 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,879 recipes
Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
- Cornmeal
- Forms the gruel that gives the bread its coarse, hearty body.
- Unbolted flour
- Provides the main structure, as its gluten builds the dough framework.
- Yeast
- Produces gas during fermentation, making the sponge and loaves rise.
- Molasses
- Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and feeds the yeast.
- Lard
- Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
The step that matters
Let the loaves rise again in a warm place. Under-proofed loaves stay dense and heavy, while over-proofed loaves can collapse in the oven. The dough should be left until it looks light and puffy before baking, so the yeast has produced enough gas to lift the loaf.
“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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