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Bread

Sour Milk Brown Bread

A steamed loaf made with cornmeal, rye meal, graham flour, sour milk, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sour Milk Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal, rye meal, graham flour, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk.

  3. Combine the milk mixture with the dry ingredients, adding more milk or water if the batter is too thick to pour.

  4. Optionally, add ½ cup of raisins for a plum loaf.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased mold and steam for three 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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas, so the bread rises and lightens.
Sour milk
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda and adds moisture and a tangy flavor.
Cornmeal
Gives the loaf its coarse, crumbly structure and hearty texture.
Rye meal
Adds earthy flavor and body, with its own starch helping the loaf hold together.
Graham flour
Contributes structure and a nutty, whole-grain flavor to the loaf.

The step that matters

Adding more milk or water to the batter. The batter should be thin enough to pour so it fills the mold evenly. Too thick a batter steams into a dense, heavy loaf, and adding liquid only as needed keeps the texture moist rather than stiff.

“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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