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Bread

Brown Bread

Brown Bread is a steamed bread made with graham flour, cornmeal, white flour, molasses, milk, raisins, currants, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Brown Bread

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine graham flour, cornmeal, white flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.

  2. Stir in molasses, sour milk, and sweet milk until well mixed.

  3. Fold in raisins and currants.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased steaming mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours, ensuring the water remains boiling throughout the cooking time.

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.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to release gas, lifting the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and its acidity helps the baking soda react.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and contributes tenderness and moisture.
Graham flour
Adds coarse texture and a nutty flavour, with gluten giving the loaf its structure.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Keep the steaming water boiling. Steamed breads rise and set through steady heat. If the water drops below boiling for long, the batter cooks unevenly and can turn out dense or gummy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cinnamon, molasses, milk, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cinnamon, molasses, milk, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More brown bread recipes

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