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Bread

Boston' Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, rye meal, milk, molasses, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and milk work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Boston' Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the yellow cornmeal, rye meal, hot water, milk, molasses, baking soda, and salt.

  2. Stir the mixture well until fully combined.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased steaming mold.

Steam

  1. Steam for 3½ 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.

  1. Rye + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

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

  2. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yellow cornmeal
Provides the bulk and coarse, crumbly texture of the bread.
Rye meal
Adds a dense, moist crumb and a deeper, earthy flavor.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses and milk acids to lighten the dense batter.
Milk
Hydrates the grains and adds moisture and softness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into a greased steaming mold. Greasing keeps the dense, sticky batter from sticking as it steams and expands. The mold should be filled only part way so the bread has room to rise without spilling.

“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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