Name: Boston Brown Bread
Ingredients: 1 cup New Orleans molasses; 1 cup sour milk; 1 cup cornmeal; 1½ cups graham flour; 1½ cups white flour; 1 cup raisins; 2 teaspoons baking soda; 2 teaspoons salt; sweet milk to make a stiff batter

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

In a large bowl, mix the molasses, sour milk, cornmeal, graham flour, white flour, raisins, baking soda, and salt.
Add sweet milk gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Steam and serve

Pour the batter into three well-buttered baking powder tins.
Steam the tins for 1½ 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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,155 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).
Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,429 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

New orleans molasses: Adds dark sweetness and moisture, and gives the bread its colour and flavour.
Sour milk: Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the bread rises and turns tender.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acidic sour milk and molasses to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Graham flour: Adds coarse texture and a nutty flavour, and absorbs liquid to firm the batter.
White flour: Provides gluten structure that holds the steamed loaf together.
Cornmeal: Adds a grainy texture and body to the crumb.

The step that matters

Steam the tins for 1½ hours. Steaming must stay gentle and continuous with water topped up, because the loaf sets through steady moist heat. Letting the water boil dry or the steam drop can leave the bread gummy or underbaked in the centre.

“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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Boston Brown Bread