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Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with flour, cornmeal, molasses, and sour milk.

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

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix and sift the dry ingredients together.

  2. Add the thick sour milk and molasses to the dry mixture and combine well.

Steam and finish

  1. Turn the mixture into a greased mold, cover tightly, and steam for 1½ hours.

  2. After steaming, remove from the mold and dry in the oven for a few moments.

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 + 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

Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas, letting the bread rise.
Thick sour milk
Supplies moisture and acid that activate the baking soda and tenderize the crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the bread.
Graham flour
Gives the bread its coarse, wholesome texture and nutty flavour.
Cornmeal
Adds a grainy texture and helps give the loaf its body.

The step that matters

Steaming the mold tightly covered. Steam provides steady moist heat that sets the batter without drying it. If the mold is not covered tightly, steam escapes, the bread can dry out, and the rise may be uneven.

“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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