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Bread

Boiled Bread

A sweet bread made with brown flour, cornmeal, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda, boiled for 3 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

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

Boil and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold and cover it tightly.

  2. Boil the mold in water for 3 hours.

  3. Serve warm with roast meats.

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

Brown flour
Provides the main structure and body of the bread.
Cornmeal
Adds a coarse, crumbly texture and a grainy body to the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, depth of flavour and moisture to the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda and adds moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the bread.

The step that matters

Covering the mold tightly. A tight seal keeps steam trapped around the batter during the long boil, so the bread cooks through and stays moist. If steam escapes, water can seep in and the texture turns soggy and uneven.

“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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