Skip to main content
Main

Boston Brown Bread

A dense rye and cornmeal bread sweetened with molasses and baked after steaming.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add it to the sour milk, stirring until it foams.

  2. Mix all ingredients together thoroughly and beat well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered round deep baking tin.

Steam and bake

  1. Steam for 2½ hours, then bake for 15-20 minutes.

  2. Serve warm or cold.

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 + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Rye flour
Provides a dense, slightly earthy structure and flavour typical of this bread.
Cornmeal
Adds body and a coarse, tender crumb to the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark colour of the bread.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda, producing gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce carbon dioxide, causing the bread to rise.

The step that matters

Dissolving and combining the baking soda with the sour milk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Stirring it into the sour milk until it foams starts that reaction, so the gas is trapped in the batter to lighten the loaf rather than being lost.

“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.

More boston brown bread recipes

Ice Cream 3 See all 349 →

You might also like

Molasses SauceMolasses Sauce32 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes