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Bread

Brown Bread

A steamed bread made from cornmeal, brown flour, molasses, salt, baking soda, and warm water.

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

Why it works: Flour and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,429 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine cornmeal, brown flour, molasses, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add warm water and mix until well combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming pan.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the crumb and gives the bread its coarse, sturdy structure.
Brown flour
Adds gluten-forming protein and body, helping hold the loaf together.
Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and adds a rich flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Steam for 2½ hours. Steaming must be gentle and continuous so the bread cooks through evenly while staying moist. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the loaf dense or gummy in the centre.

“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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