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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed and baked rye bread with molasses and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the rye meal and Indian meal together.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in 2 tablespoons of boiling water and add it to the sour milk.

  3. Stir in the molasses, then pour this mixture onto the meal.

  4. Add the salt and mix thoroughly.

Steam and bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased two-quart brown bread mold and cover with a lid.

  2. Steam for five hours.

  3. Remove the lid and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for thirty minutes.

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. Molasses + milktop 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

Rye meal
Provides the dense, hearty structure and earthy flavor of the bread.
Indian meal
Gives the loaf its coarse, crumbly texture and body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color and moisture to the crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the batter rises and stays tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Steaming the batter for five hours. Steam keeps the batter moist while it sets, so the loaf cooks through without drying out. Keeping the mold tightly covered and the water steadily simmering keeps the heat even.

“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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