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Brown Bread Steamed

A sweet steamed bread made with graham flour, cornmeal, sour milk, molasses, sugar, baking soda, and optional raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brown Bread Steamed

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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine graham flour, corn meal, sour milk, molasses, sugar, and baking soda mixture. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.

  2. Fill 1-pound baking powder cans about halfway with the batter.

Steam and finish

  1. Steam the filled cans for 2½ hours.

  2. If the bread is moist on top when done, place it in a 350°F (175°C) oven to dry off.

  3. Once hot, hold the cans upside down to let the bread slide out.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and the hearty, wholesome structure of the bread.
Corn meal
Adds a coarser texture and a slightly grainy bite to the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and add tang.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep, sweet flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the bread rise.

The step that matters

Steam until fully set. Steaming gently cooks the batter in its sealed container. If it is pulled too early, the centre stays wet and dense, which is why a moist top is dried in the oven.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, corn, milk, molasses, sugar):

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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