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Bread

Boston Brown Bread with Baking-powder

A steamed or baked bread made from cornmeal, rye, wheat, and graham flours with molasses and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 with Baking-powder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Scald half of the cornmeal and let it cool.

  2. In a bowl, mix the baking powder with the rye, wheat, and graham flours.

  3. Add the salt and molasses, then mix in enough milk or water to create a slack batter.

Steam or bake

  1. Fill well-greased molds with the batter.

  2. Steam or bake for three hours.

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 + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 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. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Gives the bread its coarse, grainy texture and body.
Rye flour
Adds an earthy flavor and dense body with little gluten.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten for structure so the loaf holds together.
Graham flour
Adds bran, nutty flavor and a coarse, dense crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark color of the bread.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the batter as it heats.

The step that matters

Creating a slack batter. The batter must be loose enough to fill the molds evenly. Flours absorb liquid as they rest, and a stiff batter bakes up dense, while enough liquid lets the starches and bran hydrate fully for a moist, even crumb.

“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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