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Bread

Steam Graham Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with graham flour, wheat flour, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Steam Graham Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine graham flour, wheat flour, molasses, and sour milk in a large bowl.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sour milk and mix it into the batter.

Steam

  1. Fill one‑pound baking powder cans half full with the batter.

  2. Cover the cans and steam for 3 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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and the coarse, nutty texture of the bread.
Wheat flour
Adds gluten-forming protein to give the loaf more structure.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas that leavens the bread.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce gas. Dissolving it fully in the sour milk before mixing spreads the leavening evenly, so the bread rises uniformly rather than in dense or bitter pockets.

“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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