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Steamed Brown Bread
Two-thirds of a cup of molasses Two cups of sour milk Two cups of corn meal Two cups of flour Two teaspoons of Larkin Soda One teaspoon of Larkin Table Salt.
Steam one and one-half hours and bake one-half hour.
A plain New England-style brown bread, steamed in a covered mold and then dried out in the oven. The recipe assumes a cook who already owns a lidded pudding mold and knows what sour milk is.
- Larkin Soda and saltThe Larkin Company of Buffalo sold groceries and household goods by mail with premiums attached, and their branded soda and table salt are simply baking soda and fine salt. Use 2 teaspoons baking soda and 1 teaspoon fine salt.
- Sour milkThis means naturally clabbered milk, thick and acidic, which reacts with the soda. Cultured buttermilk is the usual substitute; pasteurised milk left on the counter spoils rather than clabbering. Milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per cup also works.
- Corn mealUse plain yellow or white cornmeal, not degerminated instant polenta and not self-rising. Some period versions used rye as the third grain; here the flour is plain white.
- The moldFill a greased 2-quart or larger lidded pudding mold, or divide between coffee tins covered with foil and tied, no more than two-thirds full. The batter is loose and will rise; a sealed container without headroom will force the lid off.
- SteamingSet the mold on a rack in a deep pot with boiling water reaching halfway up the sides, cover, and keep the water at a steady simmer for the full hour and a half. Top up with boiling water as it evaporates so the pot never runs dry.
- The oven half hour"Bake one-half hour" is given without a temperature here; a moderate oven, around 350F, is the usual modern reading, to dry the crust after steaming. The loaf is done when a skewer comes out clean and the top feels firm rather than tacky.
- Mix quicklyOnce the soda meets the sour milk the reaction starts immediately. Combine dry and wet with a few strokes and get the mold into the steam; a batter left standing on the counter goes flat.
- Yield and servingAbout one large loaf, or two smaller ones if baked in tins. Traditionally cut with a length of string rather than a knife, and served with butter or alongside baked beans.
Steamed brown bread belongs to a New England tradition older than reliable home ovens: a batter of cornmeal, rye or wheat flour and molasses cooked over water in a covered pot, which needed only a fire and a kettle. Molasses was the cheap sweetener of the northeastern trade routes, and its acidity paired naturally with sour milk and soda once chemical leavening became a pantry staple in the mid-nineteenth century. The dish's long association with Saturday-night baked beans is traditional rather than documented in any single source, but the pairing was fixed by the time books like this one were printed. The Larkin branding here is the tell: the book circulated as a premium cookbook, and the branded ingredients in it were products the reader was expected to order from the same catalogue.