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Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with sweet milk, molasses, Indian meal, rye or Graham flour, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rye work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Steamed Brown 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, mix the sweet milk and molasses.

  2. Add the Indian meal, rye or Graham flour, salt, and baking soda, and stir until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes or longer until cooked through.

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 + ryetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Molasses + ryetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the meal and flour into a batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the bread.
Indian meal
Gives the bread its coarse, crumbly texture and corn flavor.
Rye or graham flour
Supplies the main structure and a hearty, wholesome flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the batter as it cooks.

The step that matters

Steam for the full 3 hours. Steaming gently cooks the dense batter through without drying it. Cutting the steaming short leaves the centre gummy and undercooked, so the bread needs the full time before baking.

“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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