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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with rye, Graham flour, cornmeal, molasses, and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the liquids, saving ½ cup of sour milk.

  2. Combine the rye flour, Graham flour, cornmeal, salt, and baking powder in a bowl and sift into the liquid mixture.

  3. Add the baking soda to the reserved sour milk and stir quickly into the batter.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into buttered cups.

  2. Cover with well-buttered paper and place in a steamer.

  3. Steam 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. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  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. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Rye flour
Gives the bread its dense, dark, slightly earthy structure.
Cornmeal
Adds coarse texture and body to the crumb.
Graham flour
Adds bran and whole-grain texture, giving a nutty, hearty crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Baking powder
Provides additional leavening so the bread rises during steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the finished loaf.

The step that matters

Stir the soda in quickly. Baking soda starts releasing carbon dioxide as soon as it meets the acidic sour milk, so the batter should be mixed and moved to the steamer without delay to keep the gas trapped for rising.

“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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