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Bread

Baked or Steamed Brown Bread

A loaf of brown bread made with sour milk, sorghum molasses, flour, cornmeal, nuts, raisins, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked or Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Mix sour milk and sorghum molasses together.

  2. Sift white flour, cornmeal, baking soda, salt, and baking powder together and add to the mixture, beating hard for one minute.

  3. Next, add unsifted graham flour, chopped nuts, and raisins.

Bake or steam

  1. Pour the batter into greased and flour-dusted tin cans.

  2. Bake in a low oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 2½ hours, covered or uncovered.

  3. Alternatively, steam in covered cans for 3 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.

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. Sorghum + raisintop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sorghum + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sorghum + nutstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 baking soda to produce gas, lifting the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to release carbon dioxide for rising.
Baking powder
Supplies additional gas for rising, giving the loaf a lighter crumb.
Sorghum molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour, and moisture to the batter.
Graham flour
Adds bran and coarse texture, along with body and a nutty flavour.
White flour
Provides gluten-forming structure that holds the loaf together.

The step that matters

Beating the batter hard for one minute. Vigorous mixing after the dry ingredients are added develops gluten for structure, while the leavening gases form. Overmixing after adding the graham flour and nuts can make the bread dense and tough.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Milletfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sorghum, molasses, flour, 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.

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