Name: Boston Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 cup wheat flour; 2 cups cornmeal; 1 cup rye flour; 1 cup molasses; 1 pint sour milk; 1 teaspoon baking soda

Why it works: Wheat and rye 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

In a large bowl, combine wheat flour, cornmeal, rye flour, molasses, sour milk, and baking soda. Mix until well combined.

Steam

Pour the mixture into a greased loaf pan.
Steam the bread for 3 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.

Wheat + ryetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together404 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,320 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together918 recipes

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

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 texture and hearty body.
Rye flour: Adds flavour and a denser crumb than wheat flour alone.
Wheat flour: Provides structure so the loaf holds together after steaming.
Molasses: Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark colour of the bread.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.

“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.