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Bread

Indian Meal Bread

A yeast-leavened bread made with Indian meal, molasses, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,243 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Indian Meal Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix the Indian meal with enough boiling milk or water to form a stiff batter.

  2. Stir in the molasses, salt, and baking soda dissolved in a little hot water.

  3. Let the mixture stand until lukewarm.

Rise and bake

  1. Add the baker's yeast and stir well.

  2. Let it rise in a warm place for 2 hours.

  3. Fill buttered basins to a depth of 1 inch with the mixture.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour and 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. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 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

Indian meal
Forms the bulk of the bread and gives it its coarse, corn-based structure.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Baker's yeast
Produces gas during the rise, leavening the batter so it becomes lighter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to add lift and help the bread brown.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the batter must cool to lukewarm before the yeast is added. Adding yeast too early can stop the rise and leave the bread dense.

“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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