Skip to main content
Bread

Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made from rye meal, corn meal, molasses, salt, baking soda, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rye and corn 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 ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the rye meal, corn meal, molasses, salt, and baking soda mixture.

  2. Stir in the sour milk until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

  2. Steam for 4 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 + corntop 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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

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

  4. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye meal
Forms the bulk of the crumb and gives the bread its dense, earthy structure.
Corn meal
Adds coarse texture and body, giving the loaf a looser, grainy crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the loaf.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Steam for 4 hours. Steaming must be gentle and continuous so the batter cooks through evenly and stays moist. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the center underdone or the loaf heavy.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes