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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

Boston Brown Bread is a steamed and baked bread made with Graham flour, corn meal, sour milk, salt, baking soda, and molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine Graham flour, corn meal, sour milk, salt, baking soda, and molasses. Mix well until fully combined.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam the mixture for 2.5 hours.

  2. After steaming, transfer to an oven and bake until golden brown.

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. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk 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

Graham flour
Provides the bulk and the coarse, hearty structure of the bread.
Corn meal
Adds a grainy texture and helps give the loaf its crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to make the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release gas, leavening the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the loaf.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full time. Steam is what cooks this dense batter through, and the leavening needs a steady, moist heat to set the crumb. Cutting the steaming short can leave the center heavy and gummy.

“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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