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Bread

Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, Graham flour, milk, yeast, molasses, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Brown Bread

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 ↓

Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and rise

  1. Combine cornmeal, Graham flour, milk, yeast, molasses, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Cover and let the mixture rise overnight.

  3. In the morning, add baking soda and mix well.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a greased steaming pan.

  2. Steam for 4 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Cornmeal
Provides the main body and coarse structure of the bread.
Graham flour
Adds structure and a nutty, wholesome flavour to the loaf.
Milk
Supplies moisture and helps form a soft, tender crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the batter overnight, producing gas that lightens the texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas, helping the bread rise further.

The step that matters

Mixing in the baking soda in the morning. Baking soda reacts with the acid in molasses to release gas. It must be mixed in thoroughly so the leavening is spread evenly, otherwise the bread can be dense in some spots and holey in others.

“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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