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Steamed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with graham 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 the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk.

  2. In a bowl, combine graham flour, cornmeal, and salt.

  3. Add the molasses and the dissolved baking soda mixture to the dry ingredients.

  4. Mix in enough warm water to achieve a batter-like consistency.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease round tins or pound baking powder cans and fill them halfway with the mixture.

  2. Place the tins in a steamer over a pot of boiling water.

  3. Cover tightly and steam for three hours or more.

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 to produce gas, helping the bread rise and turn lighter.
Graham flour
Provides the main structure and the wholesome, nutty body of the bread.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse texture and a slightly crumbly bite to the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds tang and moisture to the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and gives the bread its characteristic flavour.

The step that matters

Cover tightly and steam for three hours or more. Steam must stay trapped and steady around the tins; if the lid leaks or the water boils dry, the bread dries out and turns out dense and 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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