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Boston Brown Bread

A loaf of bread made from flour, cornmeal, rye flour, potatoes, sugar, salt, baking powder, and water, baked after simmering.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Margaret Brown · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 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

Prepare

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

  2. Peel, wash, and well boil two mealy potatoes; rub them through a sieve, thinning with water.

Make and steam the batter

  1. When cold, mix the sifted dry ingredients with the cooled potato puree and water to form a batter like cake.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased mould with a cover, place the mould in a saucepan half full of boiling water, and simmer for 1 hour, ensuring the water does not enter the mould.

Bake

  1. Remove the mould, take off the cover, and bake in a fairly hot oven for 30 minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

748Calories
20 gProtein
2 gFat
160 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 6 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Rye1 slice (32g)83
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Margaret Brown. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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

Cornmeal
Provides the coarse, crumbly body and the characteristic texture of the bread.
Rye flour
Adds structure and a darker colour with a deeper, slightly sour flavour.
Flour
Supplies gluten-based structure so the batter holds together after steaming.
Potatoes
Add moisture and starch, keeping the crumb soft and tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the batter so the bread rises.

The step that matters

Keeping water out of the mould while steaming. If water seeps into the mould during the one-hour simmer, the batter becomes soggy and heavy. A tight cover and a water level that stays below the rim keep the bread moist but cooked through.

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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