Skip to main content
Main

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, graham flour, sour milk, molasses, raisins, and sugar, baked in cans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine cornmeal, graham flour, sour milk, baking soda, molasses, raisins, and sugar. Mix until well combined.

  2. Fill pound baking powder cans half full with the mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam the cans for 2½ hours.

  2. If desired, place in the oven for a few moments 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and hearty, nutty structure of the bread.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse texture and body to the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the bread.
Raisins
Add pockets of chewy sweetness throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Filling the cans half full. Batter needs room to rise as the baking soda and sour milk react during steaming. Overfilling can cause the bread to overflow or become dense at the top, so leaving space is important.

“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

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes