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Steamed Corn Bread

A steamed bread made from cornmeal, flour, sour milk, sweet milk, molasses, 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Combine cornmeal, flour, sour milk, sweet milk, molasses, and baking soda in a large bowl. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a tight tin pail.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 2 ½ hours.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 °F (175 °C) for 20 minutes.

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

Cornmeal
Forms the bulk of the crumb and gives the bread its characteristic texture and corn flavour.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-forming protein that gives the batter more structure and holds the crumb together.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it fills the pail evenly.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release carbon dioxide, leavening the batter.

The step that matters

Filling the tin pail. Batter should fill the pail only partway, because the leavening gas expands as it steams. A tight seal keeps steam in so the bread cooks through and rises evenly rather than leaking or becoming dense.

“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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