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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A dense, molasses-flavored bread made with Indian meal and rye or graham flour, baked by steaming in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and milk work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses.

  2. Add the milk and Indian meal, and mix well.

  3. Grease a 2-quart tin pail.

  4. Pour the dough into the pail.

Steam and serve

  1. Place the pail in a kettle half full of boiling water.

  2. Boil for 3 hours before serving.

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. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Provides the bulk and coarse, hearty texture of the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and deep color, and reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that leavens the dough.
Milk
Hydrates the cornmeal and flour, giving the batter its moisture and binding it together.
Rye or graham flour
Adds body and a nutty, earthy flavor alongside the cornmeal.

The step that matters

Boil for 3 hours before serving. Long, gentle steaming cooks the cornmeal fully and sets the batter into a moist, dense loaf. Keeping the kettle water boiling and topped up matters, since the pail must stay submerged for the whole time.

“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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