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Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with sour milk, sweet milk, molasses, cornmeal, wheat flour, currants, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix sour milk, sweet milk, molasses, cornmeal, wheat flour, currants, salt, and baking soda well.

  2. Pour the mixture into well-greased Boston brown bread tins or baking tins, filling each ⅔ full.

Steam and finish

  1. Steam for 2½ hours.

  2. Transfer to a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 minutes before removing from tins.

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 + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

Sour milk
Reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the bread rise and lighten.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to create carbon dioxide for rising.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Yellow cornmeal
Provides the main body and hearty, crumbly texture of the bread.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure that helps hold the loaf together.

The step that matters

Filling the tins to ⅔ full. Batter rises as it cooks and leavening gases expand, so overfilling can cause the bread to spill over or bake unevenly. Leaving room lets the loaf rise fully within the tin.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, wheat, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, wheat, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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