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Dessert

Steamed Brown Bread

A sweet, steamed bread made with bread crumbs, raisins, cornmeal, and graham flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs, egg, sweet milk, cooking molasses, and baking soda.

  2. Stir in the raisins and cornmeal.

  3. Add graham flour until the mixture is the thickness of graham gems.

Steam

  1. Fill three baking powder cans half full with the mixture.

  2. Steam the cans for three hours.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Bread crumbs
Provide the bulk and body of the steamed loaf.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure as it cooks.
Cooking molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and a rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the batter and help it rise.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the bread.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse, slightly grainy texture.

The step that matters

Add graham flour until the mixture is the thickness of graham gems. Flour sets the batter's structure. Too little leaves a loose, wet loaf that may collapse, while too much makes it dense and heavy. Matching the thickness of the reference batter gives a consistent crumb.

“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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