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Bread

Brown Bread

A molasses-based bread made with flour, molasses, milk, baking soda, and salt, steamed in baking powder cans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Brown Bread

Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine flour, molasses, and milk in a large bowl.

  2. Add baking soda and salt, mixing well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into Royal baking powder cans, filling them about two-thirds full.

  2. Cover the cans and 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.

  1. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the bread together as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour, and moisture to the bread.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to leaven the bread and darken its crumb.

The step that matters

Choosing the baking soda amount. Baking soda must be matched to the milk: sweet milk needs the smaller amount, sour milk the larger. Baking soda reacts with acid to release carbon dioxide, so the wrong quantity can leave the bread flat, soapy-tasting, or too alkaline.

“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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