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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A moist, sweet bread made with cornmeal, rye meal, graham flour, white flour, molasses, and buttermilk, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,320 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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. In a bowl, combine cornmeal, rye meal, and graham flour.

  2. In a separate bowl, sift baking powder into white flour and add salt.

  3. Mix the dry ingredients together.

  4. Dissolve baking soda and molasses in buttermilk, then add to the dry mixture and mix well until the batter is about the stiffness of muffins.

  5. If using fresh milk, increase the baking powder and omit the baking soda.

Bake

  1. Grease deep tins and fill them almost half full with the batter.

  2. Place the tins in a pan with 1.5 inches of water and bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 3.5 hours.

  3. Halfway through baking, reduce the oven temperature slightly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + buttermilktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together526 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Rye + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Provides the bulk and coarse, grainy texture that gives the bread its body.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture to the batter.
Buttermilk
Supplies liquid and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to help the bread rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
Baking powder
Provides additional leavening so the batter rises during baking.
White flour
Adds gluten structure that holds the bread together with the coarser meals.

The step that matters

Steaming in a water bath. The tins must sit in water in a covered or enclosed pan so the bread cooks gently with moist heat over a long bake. Too little water or an open pan can dry the loaf out or let it set unevenly.

“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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