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Dessert

One Cup and a Half of Sour Milk

A steamed and baked cake made with rye meal, Indian meal, wheat flour, molasses, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

One Cup and a Half of Sour Milk

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the rye meal, then sift the Indian meal with the salt.

  2. Add the wheat flour and baking soda, sifting the soda twice with the flour.

  3. Stir in the molasses, then add the sour milk.

  4. Butter twelve small cup-shaped cake pans and fill them about halfway.

Steam and bake

  1. Place the pans in a large tin steamer over boiling water, ensuring the steamer is covered tightly.

  2. Steam for one hour and forty minutes.

  3. Remove from the steamer and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 8 to 10 minutes, adjusting time if the oven is very hot.

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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye meal
Provides the main body and earthy flavour of the cake's crumb.
Indian meal
Adds coarse texture and a grainy structure to the crumb.
Wheat flour
Gives the batter structure so the cake holds its shape after steaming.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and deep colour to the cake.
Sour milk
Supplies acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderises the crumb.

The step that matters

Steam with the steamer tightly covered. Steam is the only heat source for the batter, so any escape lets the steam drop and the cake can turn out dense and wet. Keeping the water boiling and the lid sealed maintains steady heat for the full steaming time.

“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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