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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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

Make the batter

  1. Sift together the dry ingredients, returning the bran to the flour mixture.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the molasses, melted shortening, and 1½ cups of sour milk until combined.

  3. Blend the wet mixture with the flour mixture and add the raisins.

  4. If needed, add more 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.

Steam and finish

  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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Graham flour
Provides the coarse bulk and hearty structure of the brown bread crumb.
Molasses
Adds dark color, moisture, and a deep sweetness to the batter.
Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and keeps it moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the bread.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and adds moistness.
Raisins
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Filling the tins no more than two-thirds full. The batter rises as the baking soda and sour milk react and the bread steams. Overfilling can cause the batter to spill over or bake unevenly, so leaving room for expansion matters.

“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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