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Bread

Sour Milk Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with corn, rye, and graham meal, molasses, raisins, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and rye work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 182 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Sour Milk Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine corn meal, rye meal, graham meal, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Stir in molasses, raisins, and sour milk until well mixed.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

  2. Steam for 3 hours until cooked through.

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 + ryetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 acidic sour milk to produce gas, helping the dense batter rise.
Sour milk
Provides acidity for the baking soda reaction and moisture for the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Corn meal
Provides the coarse, grainy structure that gives the bread its body.
Rye meal
Adds earthy flavor and a dense, moist crumb.
Graham meal
Contributes a nutty, wholesome texture and structure to the batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours until cooked through. Steaming cooks the batter gently with moist heat, so it sets without drying. Keeping the mold tightly covered and the water steadily simmering maintains that heat; without it the bread can turn out gummy or undercooked in the center.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (corn, rye, molasses, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, rye, molasses, milk. 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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