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Raisin Brownbread with Yeast

A yeasted raisin bread made with cornmeal, rye meal, and buttered tin, baked until light.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and raisin work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Raisin Brownbread with Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Stir boiling water into cornmeal and let stand for 10 minutes.

  2. Add cold water, dissolved yeast, salt, sugar, and rye meal; beat well.

  3. Mix in raisins and set aside to rise until light.

Bake

  1. Beat again and pour into a buttered tin.

  2. Bake for about 2 hours until light.

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. Rye + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Raisin + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Rye + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together348 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Yellow cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the crumb and gives the loaf its body and colour.
Rye meal
Adds earthy flavour and body, with less gluten to trap gas than wheat flour.
Yeast cake
Produces gas during the rise, lightening the dense cornmeal and rye batter.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and some browning in the crust.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture in pockets throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Stir boiling water into cornmeal and let stand. Scalding the cornmeal softens its starch and hydrates it, so the batter becomes moist and the loaf does not turn out gritty or dry. Cornmeal needs this soaking time to absorb the water fully before the other ingredients are added.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, rye, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, rye, butter. 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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