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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
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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 Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. In another pan, mix 1 cup white flour, 1 cup yellow cornmeal, 2 cups sour milk, and ½ cup molasses until well combined.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon baking soda and ¾ teaspoon coarse sea 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
Forms the main body of the bread and gives it its coarse, crumbly texture.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep color and flavor to the bread.
White flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the bread holds together better than cornmeal alone.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda to the first pan of cornmeal. Baking soda needs an acid to react with and release gas for rising. Mixing it into the moistened cornmeal before the sour milk and molasses are combined can waste some of its leavening, so the batter may rise less evenly.

“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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