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Bread

Rye and Indian Bread

A steamed and baked bread made with molasses, sour milk, water, cornmeal, graham flour, rye flour, wheat flour, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Rye and Indian Bread

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye and Indian Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the molasses, sour milk, and boiling water.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal, graham flour, rye flour, white wheat flour, baking soda, and salt until well mixed.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming pan.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar house molasses
Provides sweetness, moisture and a dark color to the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the crumb.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse, crumbly texture and body to the batter.
Rye flour
Adds flavor and a dense, moist crumb, with less gluten structure than wheat flour.
Graham flour
Contributes a nutty flavor and a coarser, heartier texture.

The step that matters

Steam for the full 3 hours with the pan sealed. Steaming keeps the batter moist and lets the leavening work gently before baking. If water escapes or the pan is opened too often, the steam drops and the bread may turn out dense or dry.

“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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