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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, rye meal, wheat flour, molasses, milk, baking soda, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the cornmeal, rye meal, whole wheat flour, molasses, and baking soda.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses before adding it to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the milk and baking powder until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a greased steaming mold.

  2. 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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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, hearty texture and sturdy crumb.
Rye meal
Adds a dense, slightly tangy flavour and helps the bread hold its moist structure.
Whole wheat flour
Provides gluten and structure so the steamed loaf holds together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and reacts with baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking powder
Provides additional leavening so the bread rises during steaming.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the molasses. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and mixed into the acidic molasses so it reacts evenly throughout the batter. Unevenly distributed soda can leave pockets of bitterness or uneven 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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