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Bread

Boston Brown Bread with Baking Powder

A steamed or baked bread made with cornmeal, rye, wheat, graham flours, molasses, salt, 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

Prepare 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 to the flour mixture.

  4. Gradually mix in enough milk or water to form a slack batter.

Cook

  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
Provides the coarse, crumbly body and characteristic texture of the bread.
Rye flour
Adds flavour and a dense, moist crumb with some structure.
Wheat flour
Supplies gluten-forming proteins that give the loaf enough structure to hold together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and deepens the flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the wet batter, helping the bread rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Gradually mixing in the milk or water. The batter should be a slack, pourable consistency. Adding the liquid slowly lets you judge how much is needed, since flours absorb liquid differently. Too little makes a stiff, dense loaf; too much makes it gummy and heavy.

“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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