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Steamed Corn Bread

A steamed bread made from cornmeal, flour, sour milk, molasses, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald 2 cups of cornmeal with boiling water.

  2. Mix in the remaining 1 cup of cornmeal and 1 cup of flour.

  3. Add 2 cups of sour milk, 1 cup of molasses, 1 teaspoon of baking soda, and ¼ teaspoon of salt.

Steam

  1. Steam the mixture for 3 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the crumb and gives the cornbread its characteristic texture.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-forming structure so the steamed loaf holds together.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise and adds tenderness.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark color to the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Scald the cornmeal with boiling water. Pouring boiling water over part of the cornmeal gelatinizes its starch, which softens the grain and keeps the finished bread moist rather than gritty or dry.

“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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