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Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed loaf made from graham flour, wheat flour, molasses, and other grains, baked in a pan or kettle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine the graham flour, wheat flour, molasses, salt, and sour milk mixed with baking soda to form a stiff batter.

  2. Pour the batter into a medium-sized buttered pan.

Steam

  1. Steam for 2.5 hours or longer, depending on the size of the loaf.

Second version

  1. For the second version, sift together the graham flour, yellow cornmeal, white flour, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Add sugar, molasses, and sour milk to the sifted mixture.

  3. Place the mixture in a lard pail, cover tightly, and set in a kettle of boiling water.

  4. Boil steadily for 2.5 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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and the coarse, hearty structure of the loaf.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and sweetness to the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to make the loaf rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Yellow cornmeal
Adds a crumbly texture and coarser body to the loaf.

The step that matters

Keep the steaming water boiling steadily. Steady boiling keeps the pan surrounded by steam or hot water so the batter cooks through evenly. If the water drops off, the loaf can turn out dense and undercooked 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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