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Boston Brown Bread

A steamed or baked bread made with molasses, sour milk, graham flour, cornmeal, raisins, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the graham flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda, returning any bran to the mixture.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the molasses, melted shortening, and 1½ cups of sour milk.

  3. Blend the wet ingredients with the dry mixture.

  4. Add more milk if needed to form a thick batter.

  5. Fold in the raisins and beat the batter well.

Fill and steam

  1. Grease coffee or baking-powder cans and fill them two-thirds full with the batter.

  2. Cover the cans.

  3. Steam for three hours.

Finish in the fireless cooker

  1. Bake for about five hours in a fireless cooker, using a hot radiator to maintain heat.

  2. Steam for one hour, then place in the fireless cooker.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark color and rich flavor of the bread.
Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Graham flour
Forms the main structure and gives the bread its coarse, wholesome texture.
Cornmeal
Adds a slightly gritty texture and helps give the loaf its body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Melted shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the bread moist.

The step that matters

Add more milk if needed to form a thick batter. The batter's consistency controls how the bread rises and sets. A batter that is too thin can turn heavy and dense, while one that is too stiff may not steam through evenly.

“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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