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Bread

Baked Brown Bread

A sweet molasses bread made with cornmeal, Graham flour, sweet milk, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve a pinch of salt in the sweet milk.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal.

  3. Add Graham flour until the mixture is the thickness of sponge cake.

  4. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45 minutes to 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, dark color and a rich, deep flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas, helping the bread rise.
Graham flour
Provides structure and body, setting the batter into a sturdy crumb as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Supplies liquid that hydrates the flour and cornmeal and keeps the crumb moist.
Cornmeal
Adds a slightly grainy texture and a mild corn flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the Graham flour. The flour must be added until the batter reaches the thickness of sponge cake. Too little leaves a loose batter that bakes flat and wet, while too much stiffens it and produces a dense loaf.

“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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