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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed and baked bread made with cornmeal, Graham flour, sour milk, molasses, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Sift the cornmeal and baking soda together.

  2. Add the Graham flour and salt, then mix in the sour milk and molasses.

  3. Melt the butter and stir it in last.

  4. Butter a brown bread mold and pour in the mixture.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 3 hours, keeping the water steadily boiling.

  2. Remove the cover of the mold and bake for 20 minutes to form a 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Yellow cornmeal
Provides the coarse texture and body that gives this bread its characteristic crumb.
Graham flour
Adds structure and a hearty, nutty texture to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that leavens the bread.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda for rising.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the bread.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that softens the crumb and adds flavour.

The step that matters

Keeping the water steadily boiling during steaming. Steaming is what cooks this dense batter through without drying it. If the water stops boiling, the steam drops, the bread cooks unevenly and can turn heavy and gummy, so the pot needs steady heat and a topped-up water level.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, molasses, butter):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, molasses, butter. 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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