Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 cup molasses; 1 cup sour milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 4 teaspoons salt; 1¾ cups cornmeal; ¾ cup flour; a dash of cinnamon; a dash of nutmeg

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a large bowl, combine molasses, sour milk, baking soda, salt, cornmeal, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and mix until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a two-quart mold.

Steam

Steam for two 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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Molasses + cinnamontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,928 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

Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark colour and a moist, dense texture to the bread.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to make the bread rise.
Cornmeal: Provides the main structure and a coarse, grainy texture.
Flour: Helps bind the batter and gives the bread more structure.

“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.