Name: Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 cup cold water; 1½ cups molasses; 1 teaspoon baking soda; ½ cup raisins; 1½ cups graham flour; ½ cup cornmeal; ¼ teaspoon salt

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

In a bowl, combine cold water, molasses, baking soda, and salt.
Stir in the graham flour and cornmeal until well mixed.
Fold in the raisins.

Steam and serve

Pour the mixture into baking powder cans.
Steam the cans for 1½ to 2 hours.

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.

Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 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

Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and gives the bread its characteristic flavor.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses acid to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Graham flour: Provides the main structure and the hearty, whole-grain texture of the bread.
Cornmeal: Adds coarser texture and body to the batter alongside the graham flour.
Raisins: Add pockets of chewy sweetness distributed through the bread.

“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.