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Bread

Brown Bread

A steamed molasses bread made with baking soda, sour milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Brown Bread

Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Combine molasses, baking soda, sour milk, and egg in a bowl.

  2. Mix well until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming dish.

Steam

  1. Steam for three 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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Molasses + eggtop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,879 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sweetness, dark color, and moisture, giving the bread its rich flavor and dense texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, lifting the batter so the bread rises.
Sour milk
Supplies acidity that activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure so the bread holds together after steaming.

The step that matters

Keep the steamer at a steady simmer. Steam is the only heat source here, so the water must keep producing steam for the full three hours. If the water boils dry or drops too low, the bread cooks unevenly and may turn out dense or gummy.

“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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