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Bread

Brown Bread Steamed

A sweet steamed bread made with sugar, raisins, molasses, cornmeal, flour, baking soda, baking powder, milk, salt, and shortening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

Make the batter

  1. Mix the ingredients in the order listed, adding the raisins dredged in flour and the hot shortening last.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for about 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, dark color and a deep, treacly flavor.
Cornmeal
Provides the bulk and coarse, crumbly texture of the bread.
Flour
Adds structure that helps hold the cornmeal and batter together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to release gas that lifts the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming to help the bread rise.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.

The step that matters

Dredging the raisins in flour. Coating the raisins in flour helps them stay spread through the thick batter instead of sinking to the bottom of the mold during steaming.

“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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