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Boston Corn Bread

A steamed and baked corn bread made with sweet and sour milk, molasses, flour, cornmeal, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Corn 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine sweet milk, sour milk, baking soda, molasses, flour, and cornmeal.

  2. Mix until well combined.

Steam and brown

  1. Pour the mixture into a steamer and steam for three hours.

  2. After steaming, brown the top in a 350°F (175°C) oven for a few 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to release carbon dioxide, causing the bread to rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and its acidity helps the baking soda react.
Cornmeal
Forms the main structure and bulk of the bread, giving its coarse, crumbly texture.
Flour
Adds gluten-based structure that helps hold the batter together as it steams.

The step that matters

Steaming for three hours. Steam must be kept constant and the steamer must not run dry, because steady moist heat sets the crumb and rising stops if the bread cools or dries out early.

“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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