Skip to main content
Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A moist bread made with rye, wheat, cornmeal, and boiled potato batter, baked after simmering.

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

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the rye flour, wheat flour, and cornmeal.

  2. Add salt, brown sugar, and baking powder to the flour mixture.

  3. Rub the boiled potatoes through a sieve, diluting with water until cool.

  4. Mix the potato mixture into the flour until it forms a batter.

Steam and bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well‑greased covered mold.

  2. Simmer the mold in a saucepan half full of boiling water for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the mold, uncover it, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

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

  3. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rye + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Gives the bread its dark color and distinctive earthy flavor.
Wheat flour
Provides the gluten-based structure that holds the loaf together.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse texture and a golden crumb to the loaf.
Boiled potatoes
Add moisture and starch, keeping the crumb soft and tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the batter so the loaf rises.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into a well-greased covered mold. The batter is loose and wet, so a well-greased mold lets the loaf release cleanly, and a tightly covered mold traps steam so the bread cooks through moist instead of drying out during the long simmer.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rye, flour, wheat, sugar):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, flour, wheat, sugar. 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.

More boston brown bread recipes

Ice Cream 3 See all 349 →

You might also like

Potato BreadPotato Bread124 recipesWheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipes