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Bread

Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, wheat, rye, molasses, milk, raisins, 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 raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix and sift the cornmeal, whole wheat flour, rye flour, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Pour in the molasses and milk, and add the floured raisins.

Steam

  1. Steam for four 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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wheat + ryetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  4. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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 molasses and milk to lighten the dense batter as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and reacts with the baking soda.
Rye flour
Adds structure and a dense, earthy texture alongside the whole wheat flour.
Whole wheat flour
Provides structure and a nutty, hearty texture to the bread.
Yellow cornmeal
Adds body and a slightly grainy texture to the loaf.

The step that matters

Steam for four hours. Steaming gently and steadily cooks the batter through without drying it. Water in the steamer must be kept topped up, because a dry steamer can scorch the pan or leave the bread undercooked.

“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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