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Bread

Steam Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, wheat flour, rye or graham flour, molasses, 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 rye match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Steam Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bread

  1. In a large bowl, mix the cornmeal, wheat flour, rye or graham flour, molasses, sour milk, baking soda, and salt until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  3. Steam the mold for 3 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Provides the main structure and the coarse, crumbly texture of the bread.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-based structure so the loaf holds together after steaming.
Rye or graham flour
Adds a denser, more earthy flavour and texture to the bread.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, along with a deep flavour.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, helping the bread rise and keeping it moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, leavening the batter as it steams.

The step that matters

Steam the mold for 3 hours. Steam keeps the batter moist while the baking soda and sour milk leaven it. Water must be kept steadily simmering so the bread cooks through evenly without drying or turning gummy.

“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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