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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 Brown 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix graham flour, cornmeal, molasses, sour milk, baking soda, and salt until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into three greased vegetable cans, filling them two-thirds full.

Steam and bake

  1. Place the cans in a steamer and steam for 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, transfer the cans to a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) and bake for 30 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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + milktop 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 coarse, hearty structure and nutty body of the bread.
Cornmeal
Adds a grainy texture and helps the loaf hold its crumb.
New orleans molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture, and a deep caramel flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to make the loaf rise and keeps it moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release gas, leavening the batter.

The step that matters

Filling the cans two-thirds full. Batter rises as the leavening gas forms during steaming. Filling higher can cause overflow or a dense, uneven loaf, while filling too little gives a small loaf. Leaving room for expansion lets the bread rise evenly.

“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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