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Steamed Corn Bread

A steamed bread made with sour milk, baking soda, butter, egg, salt, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine sour milk, baking soda, butter, egg, and salt.

  2. Add cornmeal gradually until the mixture reaches a dough consistency similar to pound cake.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Steam for 2 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide, helping the cornbread rise.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter so it holds together after steaming.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Cornmeal
Forms the body of the bread; the amount added sets the dough's firmness.

The step that matters

Adding the cornmeal gradually. Cornmeal absorbs liquid at different rates, so adding it slowly lets you stop at a pound-cake consistency. Too much at once makes a stiff, dense bread that steams up heavy.

“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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