Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups Indian meal; 2 cups rye meal; 1 cup molasses; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon baking soda; hot water

Why it works: Rye and molasses work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

In a large bowl, combine the Indian meal, rye meal, molasses, salt, and baking soda.
Gradually mix in hot water until the mixture is soft.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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.

Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together804 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

Indian meal: Provides the main structure and body of the bread.
Rye meal: Adds earthy flavor and helps give the loaf its dense texture.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses's acidity to help the loaf rise and brown.

“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.