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Bread

Steamed Corn Bread

A steamed corn bread made with sour milk, cornmeal, white flour, molasses, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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

Make the batter

  1. Combine sour milk, cornmeal, white flour, molasses, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Mix until well combined.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam the mixture for 1 hour.

  2. Bake for an additional 30 minutes.

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 + flourtop 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).

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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the crumb and gives the cornbread its body and corn flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to leaven the batter as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep, dark flavor.
White flour
Adds gluten-based structure that helps hold the crumb together.

The step that matters

Combining the batter. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk, so the batter should be mixed and put into the steamer promptly to keep the rising gas from escaping.

“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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