Name: Another Brown Bread
Ingredients: 2 quarts of milk; 1 cup of molasses; 1 large spoonful of baking soda; 1 teaspoon of salt; equal parts of Indian meal and rye meal (enough to make a soft dough)

Why it works: Milk and rye work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Another Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

2 quarts of milk
1 cup of molasses
1 large spoonful of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
equal parts of Indian meal and rye meal (enough to make a soft dough)

Directions

Mix the dough

Combine milk, molasses, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.
Gradually add equal parts of Indian meal and rye meal until a soft dough forms.
Transfer the dough to iron pans.

Bake overnight

Let the pans sit in the oven overnight.

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.

Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together918 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Molasses + ryetop 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

Milk: Provides the liquid that hydrates the meals and keeps the bread moist.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas that lifts the bread.
Indian meal: Forms the bulk of the dough and gives the bread its coarse structure.
Rye meal: Adds body and flavor to the dough alongside the Indian meal.

The step that matters

Let the pans sit in the oven overnight. Long, low, slow baking dries the crumb and deepens color through caramelization of the molasses and sugars, so the loaf sets firmly rather than staying gummy.

“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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Another Brown Bread