Name: Unbolted Flour Bread
Ingredients: 1 quart buttermilk or sour milk; saleratus (baking soda) to make it foam; a pinch of salt; ½ cup molasses; 1 egg (optional)

Why it works: Buttermilk and molasses work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 526 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Unbolted Flour Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix buttermilk, saleratus, salt, and molasses until thick like cake batter.
Pour the mixture into a deep tin and bake for 1 hour.
If in a hurry, add an egg to help it bake faster.

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.

Buttermilk + molassestop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Buttermilk + eggtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,986 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,879 recipes