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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, rye meal, molasses, milk, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water and stir it into the molasses.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, rye meal, milk, and salt.

  3. Add the molasses mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a greased mold.

  2. Steam for 2½ 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 + 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

Rye meal
Gives the bread its dense, hearty body and earthy flavor.
Yellow cornmeal
Adds a coarse, crumbly texture and sweet corn flavor.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses's acidity to release gas that lightens the batter.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the meals so they form a batter.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the molasses. Baking soda only leavens when it meets an acid, and molasses supplies that acid. Dissolving it fully in boiling water and stirring it through the molasses spreads the reaction evenly, so the bread rises uniformly instead of forming dense or bitter pockets.

“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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