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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A moist, sweet bread made with graham flour, molasses, and sour milk, baked or steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the graham flour, cornmeal, and salt, returning any bran to the mixture.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the syrup, melted shortening, and 1½ cups of sour milk.

  3. Blend the wet ingredients with the dry mixture and add the raisins.

  4. If needed, add more sour milk until a thick batter forms.

  5. Beat the batter well and pour it into greased tins, filling them no more than two-thirds full.

Cook

  1. Cover the tins and steam for three hours.

  2. For a fireless cooker, bake for about five hours, using a hot radiator to maintain heat.

  3. If no radiator is available, steam for one hour before placing in the fireless cooker.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  4. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Syrup + raisintop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Forms the bulk of the batter and gives the bread its coarse, hearty structure.
Syrup or molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse texture and body to the dense, moist crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the bread.

The step that matters

Filling the tins no more than two-thirds full. The batter rises considerably as the leavening gas expands during steaming. Overfilling can cause it to spill over or cook unevenly, while the rise needs room to develop.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, syrup, milk):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, syrup, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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