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Bread

Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed loaf made with molasses, sour milk, graham flour, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt.

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

Prepare

  1. Grease large baking pans well.

Make and steam the bread

  1. In a bowl, mix molasses, sour milk, graham flour, cornmeal, baking soda, and salt to form a stiff batter.

  2. Fill the greased pans a little more than half full with the batter.

  3. Cover the pans with lids and steam for 3½ hours.

Finish

  1. Remove the loaves from the pans while hot.

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, moisture and a deep flavor to the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the batter.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse, crumbly texture and body to the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that makes the bread rise.

The step that matters

Fill the pans only a little more than half full. The batter rises as it steams and needs room to expand. Overfilling can push batter out or give a dense, uneven loaf, while underfilling leaves a small loaf.

“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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