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Bread

Steamed Brown Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Barley and rye share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 66 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Steamed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift together cornmeal, barley flour, rye flour, baking powder, salt, and ginger.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in a little cold water.

  3. Add the dissolved baking soda to the sour milk.

Mix and steam

  1. Combine the liquid with the dry ingredients.

  2. Beat the mixture well.

  3. Steam in a well-greased brown bread tin or baking powder cans for 5 to 6 hours, depending on the size of the tin.

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. Barley + ryetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Rye + gingertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Barley + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together582 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, producing gas that helps the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk and molasses to lift the batter as it steams.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift so the batter rises during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Rye flour
Adds flavor and a dense, moist crumb along with the barley flour.
Cornmeal
Gives the bread a coarse, tender texture and a grainy body.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda and add it to the sour milk before combining. Baking soda needs an acid to release gas. Dissolving it evenly in the sour milk spreads the reaction through the batter so the bread rises uniformly rather than in pockets.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (barley, flour, rye, molasses, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against barley, flour, rye, molasses, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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