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Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, rye meal, wheat flour, graham flour, molasses, milk, baking soda, and salt.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cornmeal, rye meal, wheat flour, and graham flour.

  2. Gradually add the milk to form a smooth dough.

Add the leavening and salt

  1. In a separate bowl, stir the baking soda into the molasses until it foams.

  2. Add the foamed molasses to the dough and mix quickly.

  3. Stir in the salt.

Steam

  1. Fill the molds with the mixture and steam for 4 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. Wheat + flourtop 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 main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the bread.
Rye meal
Adds a dense, moist crumb and a deeper, earthy flavour.
Wheat flour
Supplies gluten-forming proteins that give the loaf some structure.
Graham flour
Adds bran and coarse particles for a hearty texture and nutty flavour.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and reacts with baking soda to lift the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that leavens the bread.

The step that matters

Adding the foamed molasses and mixing quickly. Baking soda and molasses react immediately to release carbon dioxide. Mixing quickly after the foaming traps that gas in the batter before it escapes, so the bread rises properly.

“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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