Name: Boston Brown Bread
Ingredients: 3½ cups whole wheat flour; 1 cup New Orleans molasses; 2 cups sweet milk; 2 teaspoons baking soda; ½ cup raisins, halved; ¼ teaspoon salt

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

Make the batter

Combine whole wheat flour, molasses, sweet milk, baking soda, raisins, and salt in a large bowl, and mix until well combined.
Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

Steam

Steam for 3 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).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

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

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,577 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Whole wheat flour: Provides the bulk and structure of the loaf, with a hearty, nutty texture.
New orleans molasses: Adds moisture, sweetness, and the dark color and rich flavor typical of this bread.
Sweet milk: Hydrates the flour so the batter forms a pourable, moist mixture.
Baking soda: Reacts with the molasses's acidity to produce gas that lightens the bread.
Raisins: Add pockets of chewy sweetness throughout the loaf.

“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.