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Steam Ed Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with graham flour, cornmeal, molasses, and sour milk, baked until brown.

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 ↓

Steam Ed Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift the salt and baking soda with the graham flour.

  2. Mix thoroughly and add the molasses and sour milk to make a stiff batter.

  3. Beat well and fill buttered and floured molds or small pails tightly covered.

Steam

  1. Place in a kettle of boiling water, allowing the water to come almost to the top of the molds.

  2. Boil for three hours.

  3. Turn out.

Finish and brown

  1. Brush with melted butter.

  2. Place in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

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. Milk + molassestop 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
Forms the bulk of the structure and gives the bread its hearty, wholesome texture.
Cornmeal
Adds coarseness and body, giving the crumb a slightly grainy texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts and lightens the batter.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Provides acidity to activate the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a rich, sweet flavor to the bread.

The step that matters

Keep the water level high and the kettle boiling. The molds must be surrounded by steadily boiling water up almost to their tops so the bread cooks evenly by steam. If the water drops or stops boiling, the bread turns out dense and underdone in the centre.

“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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