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Bread

Wheaten and Indian Bread

A quick bread made with cornmeal, Graham flour, sour milk, and baking soda, steamed and then browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Wheaten and Indian Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Stir the cornmeal and sour milk together in a bowl.

  2. Add the Graham flour, sugar, and dissolved baking soda, and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pour the batter into a well-oiled tin or earthen basin.

Steam and brown

  1. Cover the basin closely, leaving room for the batter to swell.

  2. Set the basin in a steamer over a pot of boiling water.

  3. Steam for 2 to 3 hours without lifting the lid.

  4. After steaming, place the bread in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) and brown for 10 minutes.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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

Coarse corn meal
Forms the bulk and gives the bread its grainy, sturdy structure.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Moistens the batter and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that makes the bread rise.
Graham flour
Adds body and a nutty, wholesome flavour alongside the cornmeal.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Leaving room for the batter to swell. Baking soda and acid release gas while steaming, so the batter rises substantially. A tightly filled or sealed basin can overflow or become dense, so the cover should be loose enough and the basin only partly filled.

“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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