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Bangor Brownies

A chocolate brownie with walnuts baked in a buttered pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chocolate and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,548 recipes. Both carry 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine, which smells roasted, nutty. The science ↓

Bangor Brownies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Mix and pour

  1. Mix all the ingredients together.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking pan.

  3. Sprinkle a few walnuts on top.

Bake and cut

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. Cut into squares.

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. Chocolate + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give the brownies structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the brownie together.
Butter
Adds fat for a moist, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps keep it moist.
Chocolate
Adds rich chocolate flavor and fat to the batter.

The step that matters

Bake until done. Brownies keep firming as they cool, and overbaking dries the crumb, so remove them once the centre is just set.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, chocolate, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, chocolate, egg. 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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