Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 cup sour milk; 1 cup sweet milk; 1 cup New Orleans molasses; 1 cup graham flour; 1 cup white flour; 1 cup cornmeal; 1½ cups brown sugar; 1 heaping teaspoon baking soda (dissolved in hot water)

Why it works: Molasses and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

Combine sour milk, sweet milk, and molasses in a bowl.
In another bowl, mix graham flour, white flour, cornmeal, brown sugar, and baking soda.
Combine wet and dry ingredients until well mixed.
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.

Steam and finish

Steam for 3 hours.
For larger loaves, double the recipe.

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.

Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,225 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Sour milk: Reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
Molasses: Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweet flavor to the bread.
Graham flour: Provides the coarse, wholesome body and nutty flavor of the loaf.
White flour: Supplies gluten-forming structure that holds the loaf together.
Cornmeal: Adds a grainy texture and helps give the bread its firm crumb.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to leaven the batter.

“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.