Skip to main content
Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with sweet milk, molasses, graham flour, cornmeal, white flour, baking soda, salt, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, molasses, graham flour, cornmeal, white flour, baking soda, salt, and raisins. Mix until well combined.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into baking powder cans and cover them.

  2. Steam the cans for three 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. Flour + raisintop 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 dark color, moisture and a deep sweet flavor to the bread.
Graham flour
Provides the coarse, hearty structure and nutty texture of the bread.
Cornmeal
Adds grainy texture and helps give the loaf its crumbly body.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses acidity to lighten the loaf as it steams.
Sweet milk
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flours and forms the batter.

The step that matters

Covering the cans for steaming. The cans must be sealed well so steam heats the batter evenly without water getting in. Loose covers let moisture escape or seep in, leaving the bread gummy or uneven.

“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.

More boston brown bread recipes

Ice Cream 3 See all 349 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes