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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A dense bread made with corn meal, rye meal, graham flour, wheat flour, molasses, yeast, salt, baking soda, and stale cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

  1. Soak the stale cake in water and let it stand for one day until sour.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the yeast and mix with the corn meal, rye meal, graham flour, and wheat flour to form a dough.

  3. Work in the molasses, soaked cake, and salt.

Steam and bake

  1. Fill the mixture into round molds that are 6 inches across the top, 4½ inches at the bottom, and 6 inches deep, with a tight-fitting lid.

  2. Set the molds into a vessel partly filled with water and steam over the fire or in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C), keeping the water boiling 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. Corn + wheattop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Corn + ryetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Corn meal
Provides the bulk and coarse, crumbly structure of the bread.
Rye meal
Adds flavor and helps the crumb hold moisture.
Wheat flour
Builds gluten structure so the dough holds its shape when steamed.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the loaf.
Yeast
Leavens the dough so the bread rises and becomes light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sourness of the soaked cake to add lift and open the crumb.

The step that matters

Keeping the water boiling during steaming. Steaming needs a constant supply of steam to cook the dense batter evenly through. If the water drops low or stops boiling, the loaf can turn out gummy or underbaked in the center.

“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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