Name: New England Brown Bread
Ingredients: 4 cups corn meal; 2 cups rye meal; 4 cups sweet milk; 2 cups sour milk; 2 cups molasses; 1 teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Corn and rye work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 182 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

New England Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Mix the batter

Combine corn meal, rye meal, sweet milk, sour milk, molasses, and baking soda in a large bowl. Mix until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a suitable steaming pan.

Steam and bake

Steam until fully cooked.
Transfer to a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until a light-brown crust forms.

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.

Corn + ryetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together182 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,955 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together918 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,243 recipes

Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn meal: Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the bread.
Rye meal: Adds structure and a deeper, earthier flavour to the loaf.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise and turn tender.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the bread.

The step that matters

Steaming until fully cooked. Steaming cooks the dense batter gently and evenly with moist heat. Stopping early leaves the centre gummy, because the starches and proteins in the meal need sustained heat and moisture to set through.

“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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New England Brown Bread