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Boston Brown Bread

A steamed and baked bread made with sour milk, molasses, baking soda, graham flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour 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 ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix and fill

  1. In a bowl, mix sour milk, molasses, baking soda, graham flour, and salt until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into quart tin cans.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam the cans for 1 hour.

  2. Bake for 10 minutes.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Milk and flour 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

Sour milk
Provides moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and the dark color and rich flavor typical of this bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acid to release gas, making the bread rise.
Graham flour
Forms the structure of the bread and gives it its coarse, nutty texture.

The step that matters

Steam the cans for 1 hour. Steam cooks the batter gently and evenly while keeping it moist. Steam heat that is too low or escapes from the cans can leave the bread undercooked or dry, so the cans should stay covered and the steam steady throughout.

“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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