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A quick molasses bread made with Graham flour, white flour, Indian meal, eggs, butter, milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

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Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine Graham flour, white flour, and Indian meal.

  2. In another bowl, mix milk, molasses, baking soda, and melted butter.

  3. Pour the foamy mixture into the whole flour mixture.

Make the batter and bake

  1. Work the mixture into a good batter and beat in the whipped eggs. Beat for one minute.

  2. Bake immediately.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a deep, rich flavor to the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping hold the batter together as it bakes.
Indian meal
Provides the coarse cornmeal body and texture that gives this bread its character.
Graham flour
Adds a nutty, wholesome flavor and a coarser, more tender crumb.

The step that matters

Bake immediately. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic molasses and liquid. Waiting lets much of that gas escape, so the bread may come out flat and dense.

“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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