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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

Boston Brown Bread is a steamed and baked bread made with Indian meal, Graham flour, wheat flour, molasses, thick milk, baking soda, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Combine Indian meal, Graham flour, wheat flour, molasses, thick milk, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased steaming mold.

Steam and dry

  1. Steam for 3 hours.

  2. After steaming, dry in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + milktop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Flour and milk 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

Indian meal
Provides the coarse cornmeal body and characteristic dense, crumbly texture of the bread.
Graham flour
Adds a coarse, nutty texture and wholesome body to the crumb.
Wheat flour
Supplies gluten-forming proteins that give the loaf enough structure to hold together.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, moisture, and deep caramel flavor.
Thick milk
Hydrates the flours and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic molasses to produce gas that lightens the bread.

The step that matters

Steaming for the full time in a sealed mold. Steam moisture cooks the batter gently and sets the dense crumb. If the mold is not sealed or the water runs low, the steam drops and the loaf turns gummy or unevenly cooked in the center.

“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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