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Bread

Steamed Corn Bread

A steamed bread made with flour, cornmeal, molasses, sour milk, 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 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 Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift together flour, cornmeal, and salt.

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve Magic Soda in a little molasses, then add to the remaining molasses and sour milk.

  2. Pour the liquid mixture into the dry ingredients, and beat well.

Steam

  1. Steam for 2 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. 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. Molasses + milktop 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

Magic soda
Reacts with the sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the soda and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Cornmeal
Provides the bulk and the coarse, grainy texture of the cornbread.
Flour
Adds structure so the steamed bread holds its shape.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a dark color to the bread.

The step that matters

Dissolve Magic Soda in a little molasses first. Mixing the soda into a small amount of molasses before adding the rest spreads it evenly, so the batter rises uniformly instead of leaving pockets of soda or uneven lift.

“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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