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Boston Corn Bread

A steamed cornbread made with sweet and sour milk, ricotta, wheat flour, cornmeal, and baking soda, finished by browning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Boston Corn Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, sour milk, ricotta cheese, wheat flour, cornmeal, and baking soda. Mix until well combined.

Steam and brown

  1. Pour the mixture into a steamer and steam for 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, brown the top in a 400°F (200°C) oven for a few minutes.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ricotta cheese + wheattop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Milk + ricotta cheesetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together246 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Milk and flour 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

Cornmeal
Provides the main body and grainy texture of the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the bread rise and gives a tangy flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Wheat flour
Adds structure so the bread holds together after steaming.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into the steamer promptly after mixing. Baking soda starts reacting with the acid in the sour milk as soon as the batter is mixed. Waiting too long lets much of that gas escape before steaming sets the crumb, which can leave the bread dense.

“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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