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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A whole wheat molasses bread steamed for three hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Mix the batter

  1. Sift together the whole wheat flour, water-ground meal, and salt.

  2. Mix in the dark molasses and buttermilk.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the milk and add it to the mixture before placing it in cans.

  4. For raisin bread, add ½ box of washed and dried seeded raisins.

  5. For fruit bread, add 1 cup of mixed chopped fruits like raisins, citron, cherries, or pineapple.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill one-pound baking powder cans two-thirds full.

  2. Place the filled cans in a vessel of warm water.

  3. Cover the vessel with several layers of cloth and a lid.

  4. Steam for three hours, adding more water if necessary.

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 + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Whole wheat flour
Provides the main structure and the hearty, nutty body of the bread.
Water-ground meal
Adds a coarse, grainy texture that gives the bread its traditional crumb.
Dark molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep sweetness to the bread.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and tenderize the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk and molasses to produce gas that makes the bread rise.

The step that matters

Filling the cans two-thirds full. Steamed batter rises considerably as the baking soda releases gas. Filling beyond two-thirds can cause the batter to overflow or bake dense and uneven, so leaving headroom matters.

“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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