Skip to main content
Main

Steamed Corn Bread

A steamed cornbread made with Indian meal, flour, sugar, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, and melted lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Steamed Corn 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. Combine Indian meal, flour, sugar, buttermilk, baking soda, salt, and melted lard in a bowl.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

Steam and bake

  1. Place the mold in a steamer over a pot of boiling water.

  2. Steam the mold for 1¼ hours.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 10 minutes.

  4. Serve warm.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Provides the main cornbread structure and its characteristic grainy texture.
Flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the steamed loaf holds together.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Melted lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Steaming the mold for 1¼ hours. The mold must sit over steadily boiling water for the full time, or the batter will cook unevenly and stay gummy. Keep the water level topped up so the steam stays constant.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes