Skip to main content
Main

Steamed Brown Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a pan, combine 2 cups yellow cornmeal and enough boiling water to moisten.

  2. In another pan, mix 1 cup white flour, 1 cup yellow cornmeal, 2 cups sour milk, and ¼ cup molasses until well combined.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon baking soda and ½ teaspoon salt to the first pan of cornmeal.

Steam

  1. Pour the contents of both pans together and beat for five minutes.

  2. Steam the mixture for five 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

Yellow cornmeal
Provides the main structure and the characteristic grainy texture of the bread.
White flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the bread holds together more firmly than cornmeal alone.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deep, dark flavour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, helping the bread rise.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda to the first pan. Baking soda must meet the acid in the sour milk to release gas for rising. Combining the batter well and beating it evenly spreads the leavening through the mixture so the bread rises uniformly during steaming.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes