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Bread

Steamed Entire Wheat Bread

A steamed bread made with molasses, baking soda, sweet milk, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Entire Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses.

  2. Combine the molasses mixture with sweet milk and salt.

  3. Add enough flour to create a thick batter.

Steam

  1. Steam the batter 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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 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).

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

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that leavens the bread.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour into a batter.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the bread its structure.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Dissolving it fully in the molasses first distributes it evenly, so the batter rises uniformly rather than in pockets.

“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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