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Steamed Corn Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in 1 tablespoon of water.

  2. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, cornmeal, salt, sweet milk, sour milk, molasses, and the dissolved baking soda.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a steamer.

  2. Steam 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk and molasses acids to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and tenderness to the crumb.
Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the structure, giving the bread its coarse, grainy texture.
Molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness, and depth of flavor, and helps the crumb brown.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten-based structure that helps hold the steamed loaf together.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in water before mixing. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly with the acidic sour milk and molasses. Unevenly dispersed soda can leave bitter pockets or patchy rising.

“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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