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Bread

Steamed Brown Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, sour milk, cornmeal, flour, molasses, baking soda, and salt. Mix until well combined.

  2. Grease baking powder cans and fill them half full with the batter.

Steam

  1. Steam the cans for 3 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 + flourtop 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. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Cornmeal
Provides the main body and corn flavor of the bread.
All-purpose flour
Adds structure so the batter holds together after steaming.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark, rich flavor.

The step that matters

Steam the cans for 3 hours. Steam must surround the cans and the water must stay at a steady simmer for the full time. Steady moist heat cooks the batter through and sets it without drying it out. Letting the water boil dry or drop too low leaves the bread gummy or underdone in the center.

“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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