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Bread

Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, Graham flour, molasses, and sour milk, then browned in an oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, Graham flour, molasses, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add sour milk gradually until the mixture resembles a cake batter.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased steaming dish.

Steam and brown

  1. Steam for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, brown the bread in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Cornmeal
Gives the bread its coarse, hearty body and texture.
Graham flour
Provides structure and a nutty, wholesome flavor to the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color to the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Sour milk
Supplies liquid and acidity that activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Steaming the batter. The bread must steam long enough for the batter to set fully through; steam holds moisture in, so the loaf cooks evenly without drying. Lifting the lid or letting the water run low can cause uneven, dense results.

“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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