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Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with graham flour, sour milk, molasses, raisins, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix together the graham flour, sour milk, molasses, salt, baking soda, and raisins until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 1½ hours.

  2. After steaming, bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and structure of the bread, with a nutty, coarse crumb.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas and make the bread rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep brown color and flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the bread.

The step that matters

Steaming the batter. Steam holds moisture in the mold, so the batter cooks gently and evenly and stays moist. Because the baking soda starts reacting as soon as the wet batter is mixed, it should go into the mold promptly so the rise is not lost.

“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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