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Wheaten and Indian Bread

A steamed and baked bread made with cornmeal, Graham flour, sour milk, baking soda, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Wheaten and Indian Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Stir the corn meal and milk together.

  2. Add the Graham flour, sugar, and dissolved baking soda, and beat thoroughly.

  3. Pour the batter into a well-oiled tin or earthen basin, cover closely, leaving room to swell.

Steam and brown

  1. Set it in a steamer over a pot of boiling water and steam for 2 to 3 hours without lifting the lid.

  2. After steaming, place in a 400°F (200°C) oven and brown for 10 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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Coarse corn meal
Forms the main body of the bread and gives it its coarse, crumbly texture.
Graham flour
Adds wheat bran and germ for a nuttier flavour and a denser crumb.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Moistens the batter and its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lighten it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk to produce gas, helping the bread rise and swell.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Leave room to swell and keep the lid on while steaming. The batter rises as the baking soda reacts and steam forms, so it needs space to expand. Lifting the lid releases steam and drops the temperature, which can leave the bread heavy and sunken.

“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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