Skip to main content
Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A dense bread made with graham, Indian, and wheat flours, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda, boiled in a lard kettle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flours with a little salt.

  2. Pour in the molasses.

  3. Stir in the sour milk or buttermilk and baking soda until it froths.

  4. Gradually pour the mixture over the flour.

  5. Beat until light.

Steam

  1. Butter a 2 or 3 lb lard kettle.

  2. Pour in the mixture.

  3. Cover tightly.

  4. Boil in a pot of water for 3 hours.

  5. Leave on the range overnight.

Finish and brown

  1. In the morning, turn it out carefully.

  2. Place it in the oven for a few minutes to brown the crust.

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

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

  2. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. 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
Gives the bread its coarse, hearty texture and nutty flavour.
Indian meal
Adds corn structure and a granular crumb to the loaf.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten for structure so the loaf holds its shape while steaming.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the crumb.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic milk to produce carbon dioxide, causing the bread to rise.

The step that matters

Cover tightly before steaming. A tight seal keeps steam trapped around the batter, so the bread cooks through with a moist crumb. A loose cover lets steam escape, which can dry the loaf and stop it rising 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.

More boston brown bread recipes

Ice Cream 3 See all 349 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes