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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A potato-based bread baked and steamed, made with flour, cornmeal, rye flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, water, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and rye match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift together the flour, cornmeal, rye flour, brown sugar, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Peel, wash, and boil the potatoes until soft, then rub them through a sieve, diluting with water.

  3. Once the potato mixture is cold, mix it with the dry ingredients to form a batter.

Steam and bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased mold with a cover (a tin pail works well).

  2. Place the mold in a kettle or saucepan half full of boiling water and steam for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the cover and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

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. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rye + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rye + sugartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the batter together as it steams and bakes.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse, grainy texture and a sturdy body to the crumb.
Rye flour
Adds a dense, slightly earthy flavor and helps give the bread its dark color.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the bread rises and becomes lighter.
Mealy potatoes
Add moisture and starch, keeping the bread tender and moist.

The step that matters

Cooling the potato mixture before combining. Mixing warm potato purée into the batter can start the baking powder's reaction too early and make the texture uneven. Letting it cool first keeps the leavening working steadily during steaming.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, rye, sugar):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, rye, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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