Skip to main content
Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A dense bread made with cornmeal, molasses, rye meal, and whole wheat flour, baked by steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal, molasses, rye meal, baking soda, whole wheat flour (or milk), and baking powder in the order given.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses before adding it to the mixture.

Steam

  1. Steam the mixture for three hours.

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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Molasses + ryetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + wheattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 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

Cornmeal
Provides the coarse, crumbly body that gives the bread its texture.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark color and deep flavor of the bread.
Rye meal
Adds a earthy flavor and a dense, tender crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking powder
Supplies additional leavening so the bread rises during steaming.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses first. Baking soda clumps when added dry and may not disperse evenly through the batter. Dissolving it in the molasses spreads it evenly, so it reacts with the molasses acid throughout and the bread rises uniformly instead of forming dense or patchy spots.

“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.

More boston brown bread recipes

Ice Cream 3 See all 349 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes