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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A molasses-based bread made with rye, graham, and corn meal, baked in cans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and corn work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 182 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix molasses and baking soda until light.

  2. Add rye meal, Graham meal, corn meal, sour milk (or hot water), and salt. Mix well.

  3. If desired, fold in raisins.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into baking powder cans, filling them halfway.

  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. Rye + corntop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Rye + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and a rich, moist texture to the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Rye meal
Contributes a hearty flavour and a dense, moist crumb.
Graham meal
Adds a coarse, nutty texture and wholesome body to the crumb.
Corn meal
Gives the bread a tender, slightly grainy structure and body.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise and stay moist.

The step that matters

Filling the cans halfway. The batter needs room to rise as it steams. Overfilling can push the batter out or leave a dense, heavy loaf, so leave space above it.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, rye, corn, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, rye, corn, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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