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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed brown bread made with wheat, graham, and cornmeal, molasses, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine wheat flour, graham flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water and stir it into the molasses.

  3. Mix the molasses mixture with the dry ingredients, adding enough cold water to create a medium-thin batter.

  4. Pour the batter into well-greased molds.

Steam

  1. Steam the molds for two hours or more.

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Wheat + molassestop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Provides the main structure that holds the bread together as it steams.
Graham flour
Adds bran and coarse texture, giving the bread its hearty, nutty character.
Cornmeal
Adds a grainy texture and a slightly sweet corn flavor.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark color of the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in molasses to release gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in hot water before adding the molasses. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and evenly distributed so it reacts with the molasses acid throughout the batter. Clumps can leave bitter pockets and uneven rise.

“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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