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Bread

Boston Brown Bread No. 1

A steamed rye, corn, and graham flour bread flavored with 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 corn work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 182 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread No. 1

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix and sift together the rye meal, corn meal, graham flour, and salt.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the sour milk, baking soda, and molasses.

  3. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until well combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered mold, filling it two-thirds full.

Steam and serve

  1. Cover the mold with a well-buttered lid and steam for 3.5 hours.

  2. Turn the bread onto a dish and let it stand in a hot oven for a few minutes before serving.

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 + corntop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together182 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  5. Corn + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, earthy body characteristic of this bread.
Corn meal
Adds coarse texture and a slightly crumbly, grainy structure to the loaf.
Graham flour
Contributes bran and gluten structure, giving a nutty flavor and sturdier crumb.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that leavens the bread.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to release carbon dioxide, causing the bread to rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the finished bread.

The step that matters

Cover the mold tightly and steam for the full time. Steaming keeps the batter moist while the leavening gas expands and sets the crumb. If the mold lid is loose or the water runs low, steam escapes, the bread dries out and may turn out dense or uneven.

“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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