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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed whole wheat bread with molasses, buttermilk, and optional raisins or mixed fruits.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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. Sift together the whole wheat flour, water-ground meal, and salt.

  2. Mix in the dark molasses and buttermilk until well combined.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the seeded raisins.

  5. Add the mixed chopped fruits.

Steam

  1. Fill one-pound baking powder cans two-thirds full with the batter.

  2. Place the cans in a vessel of warm water and cover with several layers of cloth and a lid.

  3. Steam for three hours, adding more water as necessary.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole wheat flour
Provides the main structure and a hearty, nutty body to the bread.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds tenderness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that leavens the bread.
Dark molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and deep color and flavor to the crumb.
Water-ground meal
Adds coarse texture and corn flavor, helping give the bread its characteristic crumb.

The step that matters

Keep the steaming water topped up. Steaming cooks the bread gently with moist heat. If the water boils down and the cans are exposed, the bread dries out and may not set evenly, so the pot must keep a steady supply of water throughout the three hours.

“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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