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Bread

Real New England Brown Bread

A rye and Indian meal bread leavened with yeast, baked in a brick oven or pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Real New England Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the rye flour and Indian meal together well.

  2. Add molasses and yeast to the mixed meal.

  3. Wet the mixture with warm milk or water until it forms a workable dough.

  4. Let the dough rise for 12 hours in cold weather or 2 hours in warm weather.

Bake and serve

  1. If using a brick oven, let a 3-quart loaf bake overnight.

  2. If using baking pans, bake for about 3 hours.

  3. Serve warm with sweet butter.

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Rye flour
Adds a dense, hearty structure and a distinctive earthy flavor to the loaf.
Indian meal
Provides the bulk of the crumb and a coarse, grainy texture.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, leavening the dense dough.
Molasses
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and deep color to the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise. Rye and cornmeal contain little gluten, so the dough rises more slowly and less dramatically than wheat dough. Rising time depends on temperature, so the dough needs to be given the full time its conditions require for the yeast to leaven it properly.

“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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