Skip to main content
Main

Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with flour, cornmeal, molasses, sweet milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the unbleached flour, cornmeal, baking powder, molasses, sweet milk, and salt, then mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for 2½ hours.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Unbolted flour
Provides the main structure of the bread as the batter sets.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarser, grainy texture and a mild corn flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to lift and lighten the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and cornmeal and keeps the crumb moist.

The step that matters

Steam for 2½ hours. Steam must stay gentle and steady for the full time so the batter cooks through evenly. Letting the water boil dry or letting condensation drip into the mold can leave the bread gummy or uneven.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes