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Bread

To Make Good Brown Bread

A sweet bread made with Indian meal, rye meal, molasses, ginger, baking soda, and warm water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and ginger work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 54 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

To Make Good Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine Indian meal and rye meal in a pan.

  2. Add molasses and ginger to the mixture.

  3. Dissolve saleratus in warm water and mix it into the meal until soft.

Rise and bake

  1. Let the mixture rise overnight.

  2. When risen, place it in pans and bake until done.

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. Rye + gingertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Molasses + gingertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 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
Provides the main structure and bulk of the bread.
Rye meal
Adds body and a denser, hearty texture to the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Saleratus (baking soda)
Reacts with the molasses and creates gas that lifts the dough as it rises.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture rise overnight. The rise is what lightens the dense meal batter. Baking soda needs time to react, and the dough should be fully risen before baking so the loaf does not turn out heavy.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, molasses):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, molasses. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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