Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Sflendid Brown Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
In a large bowl, combine sour milk, mote seeds, lard, baking soda, and salt.
Add enough Graham flour to form a stiff batter.
Steam
Transfer the batter to a 2-quart tin pail and cover with the lid.
Suspend the pail by a stick through the handle in a pot of boiling water.
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.
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
- Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that leavens the bread.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release carbon dioxide, lifting the loaf.
- Lard
- Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the bread moist.
- Graham flour
- Provides the bulk and structure that holds the stiff batter together.
The step that matters
Suspending the pail in boiling water. The bread cooks by gentle steam and heat held inside the covered pail. Keeping the lid on traps the steam, and the water must stay at a steady boil so the batter cooks through evenly.
“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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