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Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with graham flour, molasses, sour milk, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the graham flour, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Stir in the molasses, sour milk, and raisins 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 15 minutes.

  3. Serve hot.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and milk 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

Graham flour
Forms the bulk of the bread's structure and gives it a hearty, coarse texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Sour milk
Supplies acidity to activate the baking soda and adds moisture.
Seeded raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Steam for the full 3 hours. Steaming gently cooks and sets the batter with moist heat. Cutting the time short leaves the center dense and underset, since the baking soda needs enough sustained heat to finish raising the loaf.

“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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