Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 pint sour milk; 1 pint sweet milk; 4 cups Indian meal; 2 cups rye meal; ⅔ cup molasses; 2 teaspoons baking soda; ¼ teaspoon salt

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 ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Combine sour milk, sweet milk, Indian meal, rye meal, molasses, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Mix until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

Steam

Steam for 4 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.

Milk + ryetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together918 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Rye + molassestop 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

Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to make carbon dioxide, so the bread rises.
Indian meal: Cornmeal forms the main structure of the bread.
Rye meal: Adds body and a denser, more robust texture alongside the cornmeal.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and a deep, caramel-like flavour.

“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.