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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A dense, sweet bread made with cornmeal, graham flour, white flour, sour milk, molasses, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the batter

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

  2. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1.5 hours in a covered pot.

  2. Let cool before slicing.

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. Milk + molassestop 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

Cornmeal
Gives the bread its coarse, crumbly texture and yellow color.
Graham flour
Adds a nutty flavor and a denser, heartier crumb.
White flour
Provides gluten structure so the loaf holds together.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to make the bread rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the loaf.

The step that matters

Steaming the loaf. The pot must stay covered and the water must not run dry, because steam keeps the batter moist and lets the leavening set the loaf without drying or scorching the outside.

“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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