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Shredded Wheat Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with shredded wheat, cornmeal, molasses, sweet milk, sour milk, 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: Wheat and milk 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 ↓

Shredded Wheat Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil water before starting the bread.

Make the batter

  1. Mix shredded wheat, cornmeal, and salt in a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine molasses with ½ teaspoon of baking soda.

  3. Add 1¼ cups of sweet milk to the molasses mixture.

  4. In another bowl, mix sour milk with the remaining ½ teaspoon of baking soda until it foams.

  5. Combine all mixtures and stir well.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered brown bread mold, cover tightly, and steam for three 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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  2. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Wheat + molassestop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Shredded wheat
Provides the bulk and chewy, hearty structure of the loaf.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse texture and body to the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to leaven the bread.

The step that matters

Foaming the sour milk with baking soda. The acid in sour milk must react with the baking soda before the batter is combined. This releases carbon dioxide that lightens the crumb, so the mixture should foam before it is added to the batter.

“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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