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Bread

New England Brown Bread

A steamed cornmeal bread from New England.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

New England Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a dish, combine corn meal, molasses, and salt.

  2. Add warm water and stir thoroughly.

  3. Cover and let sit in a warm place overnight.

Finish and steam

  1. In the morning, dissolve baking soda in ⅛ cup hot water and add to the mixture.

  2. Stir in flour and mix well.

  3. Pour the mixture into cans and steam for 6 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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Corn + molassestop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together644 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Corn meal
Forms the bulk of the bread and gives it its coarse, hearty texture.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and flavour during the long rest.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to lighten the crumb and help it rise.
Flour
Adds structure so the steamed loaf holds its shape.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Overnight rest in a warm place. The long soak hydrates the corn meal fully and lets its starches soften, so the finished bread is moist rather than gritty. Covering it keeps the surface from drying out.

“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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