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Bread

Steamed Graham Bread

A steamed bread made with graham flour, sweet and sour milk, molasses, sugar, raisins, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sweet milk, sour milk, molasses, sugar, and raisins.

  2. Add baking soda and salt, then mix in enough graham flour to form a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

  1. Transfer the batter to a greased steaming dish.

  2. Steam for 3 hours 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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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 batter and gives the bread its structure and hearty texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter as it steams.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness to the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, moisture, and a deep flavor to the bread.
Raisins
Add pockets of moisture and sweetness throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Steam for 3 hours until cooked through. Steaming cooks the batter gently with moist heat, so it needs a full, unbroken steam over the whole time. Lifting the lid or letting the water run low drops the temperature and can leave the center dense or undercooked.

“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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