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Bread

Indian Bannock

A baked bread made from fine meal, milk, eggs, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Indian Bannock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Scald the fine meal carefully to avoid lumps.

  2. Add the milk, eggs, sugar, and salt to the meal.

  3. Mix well and pour into tin pans.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Fine meal
Its starch thickens and sets the batter into a firm, sliceable structure as it cooks.
Milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the meal and keeps the bannock moist.
Eggs
Set during baking, binding the batter and adding richness and structure.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Scalding the fine meal. Starch granules swell when hot liquid reaches them evenly. If the meal is added dry or stirred poorly, dry pockets clump into lumps that stay raw inside the finished bannock.

“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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