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Steamed Brown Bread
2 tablespoons Mazola 3/4 cup Karo, Blue Label 1 cup graham meal 1 cup rye meal 2 cups cornmeal 1¼ teaspoons salt 1 pint sour milk 1 teaspoon baking soda 3/4 cup raisins (optional) Pour the Mazola, Karo and milk in a mixing bowl. Add the soda dissolved in one tablespoon boiling water, beat in the meal, salt and raisins if used. Transfer to three one pound baking powder cans, or one large mould, oiled with Mazola and steam an hour and a half for the small moulds, four hours for the large Serve with butter or with heated Karo, Orange Label. one.
A corn-industry version of Boston brown bread, with Karo standing in for the usual molasses. The method is sound; the products and vessels need translating.
- The hinge: steam, don't bakeThe molds go into a covered pot on a rack, with boiling water reaching about halfway up their sides, kept at a steady simmer and topped up from the kettle as it evaporates. If the water boils dry or the pot is uncovered, the loaves bake into bricks.
- Fill the molds two-thirdsThe batter rises considerably and has nowhere to go. Cover each mold with oiled foil or parchment tied down, or the condensate will drip in and leave a wet crown.
- One-pound baking powder cansThese held roughly 2 cups each. Three 15-16 oz cans, well washed, or a 1.5-2 quart pudding mold or coffee tin will do. Avoid modern cans with plastic-film linings; a proper pudding basin is easier.
- Graham meal and rye mealGraham meal is coarse whole wheat flour, rye meal is whole rye flour (medium or dark). Both are still sold, often as "whole wheat flour, coarse" and "dark rye"; ordinary whole wheat and rye flours work with slightly less grain flavor.
- Sour milkA pint is 2 cups. Use cultured buttermilk; the acid is what activates the soda. Fresh milk soured with a tablespoon of vinegar per cup is a workable substitute.
- Karo Blue LabelKaro was sold in several graded labels in this period; Blue Label appears to have been one of the darker table syrups, and dark corn syrup is the nearest current stand-in. Orange Label, called for at the table, is generally described as a maple-flavored syrup - warmed maple syrup serves. Mazola is corn oil, unchanged.
- Doneness and timingAn hour and a half for the small cans and four hours for the large mold are about right, but test with a skewer; the center should come out clean and read around 200F. The loaves steam through faster in narrow cans than in one broad mold.
- Finishing and yieldLet the loaves stand five minutes, then turn out and dry them a few minutes in a low oven if the crust is tacky. Three cans give three small loaves, best cut warm with a serrated knife or a length of thread.
Steamed brown bread belongs to New England, where a batter of cornmeal, rye and whole wheat - the "thirds" that gave rise to the older name thirded bread - was cooked over water rather than in the brick oven, traditionally alongside Saturday baked beans. What marks this version is the sweetener: the standard recipe uses molasses, and here it has been replaced by Karo corn syrup, with corn oil for the shortening. That substitution is the whole point of the book, which was issued to promote Mazola and Karo, both products of American corn refining; branded cookbooks of this kind were a common form of advertising in the early twentieth century, teaching cooks to reach for a trademarked bottle where a grandmother would have reached for a jug of molasses and a lump of pork fat.