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Bread

Economical Brown Bread

A simple bread made from stale bread, molasses, oats, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt, steamed for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and oats work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 258 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Economical Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the stale bread in hot water until soft.

  2. Moisten the rolled oats and cornmeal with enough cold water to thoroughly wet them.

Combine and steam

  1. Combine the soaked bread, moistened oats, cornmeal, molasses, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Steam the mixture 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.

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. Bread + oatstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together258 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Molasses + oatstop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Bread + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together529 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

Stale bread
Soaked until soft, it adds moisture and a tender crumb to the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep flavor to the bread.
Cornmeal
Provides the bulk and a coarse, sturdy texture to the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the loaf rise and lighten.
Rolled oats
Add chewy texture and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Steam the mixture for three hours. Steaming keeps the loaf moist while it sets, so the batter cooks through without drying. Keep the water level steady so the steam stays constant over the full time.

“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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