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Bread

Splendid Brown Bread

A steamed and baked bread made with sour milk, molasses, lard, baking soda, salt, and Graham flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Splendid Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sour milk, molasses, lard, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Add enough Graham flour to form a stiff batter.

  3. Transfer the batter to a 2-quart tin pail and cover with the lid.

Steam

  1. Suspend the pail over boiling water using a stick through the handle.

  2. Steam for 3 hours.

Bake

  1. After steaming, remove the lid and bake in the same pail in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until done.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour 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

Sour milk
Adds acidity and moisture, and reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark color typical of brown bread.
Lard
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and keeps the bread moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas, lifting the batter as it steams.
Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure that sets the stiff batter into a loaf.

The step that matters

Suspend the pail over boiling water. The pail should hang above the water so steam, not liquid, surrounds it, and the water must keep boiling for the full steaming time. Uneven or lost steam leaves the bread dense and underdone.

“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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