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Bread

Graham Bread

A sweet bread made with sour milk, molasses, graham flour, and yeast, baked slowly at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the first dough

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, molasses, baking soda, egg, salt, and enough graham flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Bake the dough slowly in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C).

Make the second recipe

  1. For the second recipe, mix warm water with enough graham flour to make a stiff batter.

  2. Add yeast to the batter and let it rise overnight.

  3. In the morning, mix in a small piece of butter and sugar, then add wheat flour to mold the dough.

  4. Place the dough in well-greased pans, let it rise, and bake slowly for 1 hour.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide, leavening the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color to the crumb.
Egg
Adds structure and moisture that helps bind the dough.
Yeast
Ferments the batter over the night, producing gas that raises the dough.
Graham flour
Forms the stiff dough body and gives the bread its hearty, bran-rich texture.

“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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