Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups Indian meal; 2 cups graham meal; 1 cup all-purpose flour; 1 cup molasses; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ¼ teaspoon salt; hot water

Why it works: Flour and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Scald the Indian meal and graham meal with hot water.
Add the molasses to the mixture.
Sift in the flour, baking soda, and salt, and mix well.

Steam

Steam the mixture for 4.5 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.

Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal: Forms the bulk of the loaf and gives it its coarse, hearty structure.
Graham meal: Adds body and a coarse, nutty texture to the loaf.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark colour.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses' acidity to lighten the crumb and help it rise.
All-purpose flour: Adds structure that holds the loaf together after steaming.

“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.