Name: Boston Brown Bread
Ingredients: 2 cups cornmeal; 1 cup whole wheat flour; 1 cup molasses; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 1 teaspoon baking powder; 2 cups buttermilk or sour milk

Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).
In a bowl, mix the cornmeal, whole wheat flour, molasses, baking soda, and baking powder.
Gradually add the buttermilk, stirring until well combined.
Pour the batter into greased molds.

Bake

Place the molds in a pan with 1 to 2 inches of water to prevent excessive browning.
Bake for about 3 hours, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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.

Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together526 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Wheat + buttermilktop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together226 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 coarse, crumbly structure of the bread.
Whole wheat flour: Adds gluten-based structure and a nutty, earthy flavor to the bread.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture, and deepens the flavor.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce carbon dioxide for rising.
Buttermilk: Its acidity activates the baking soda and its liquid hydrates the cornmeal and flour.

The step that matters

Water bath around the molds. The water bath moderates the heat reaching the outside of the batter, so the bread steams and cooks through slowly without browning or drying out too quickly during the long bake.

“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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Boston Brown Bread