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Bread

Hygienic Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, rye meal, molasses, eggs, cream, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and molasses work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Hygienic Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift together the cornmeal, rye meal, and salt.

Make the batter

  1. Add the molasses, beaten egg yolks, and diluted cream, then mix thoroughly.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Steam

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and steam for three 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 + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Molasses + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,408 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Rye + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together150 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Rye + eggtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Cornmeal
Provides the main body and coarse, crumbly texture of the bread.
Rye meal
Adds structure and a deeper, earthy flavor to the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter together.
Egg whites
Folded in to lighten the batter and add some rise.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the bread tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air when beaten, and folding gently keeps that air in the batter. Stirring vigorously would deflate the foam, leaving the steamed bread denser.

“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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