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Bread

Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, graham flour, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda, baked after steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and pan

  1. In a bowl, stir together cornmeal, graham flour, molasses, sour milk, and dissolved baking soda.

  2. Beat the mixture well, then pour it into a small, round, deep, buttered baking pan.

Steam and bake

  1. Place the pan in a saucepan filled with hot water and steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

  2. After steaming, bake for an additional 10 minutes.

  3. Serve warm or cold.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the coarse, crumbly body that gives the bread its structure.
Graham flour
Adds gluten and a nutty, wholesome texture to the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the bread rises and stays tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the batter.

The step that matters

Keeping the steaming water hot and steady. Steaming cooks the batter gently and lets the leavening work before the bread sets. If the water stops simmering, the bread can turn heavy and underbaked in the center.

“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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