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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed and baked bread made with cornmeal, rye, wheat flour, molasses, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. 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. Sift the flour before measuring, then mix all dry ingredients and sift again.

  2. Mix the molasses and water, then stir it into the flour mixture.

  3. Butter small round tins well and fill them two-thirds with the mixture.

Steam and finish

  1. Steam the tins for two hours.

  2. After steaming, place them in a 350°F (175°C) oven for ten 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 + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

White cornmeal
Adds a coarse, slightly crumbly texture and a sweet corn flavor.
Rye flour
Adds a tangy, earthy flavor and helps give the bread its dense crumb.
Whole wheat flour
Provides structure and a nutty, hearty flavor to the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the molasses to produce gas that lifts the batter as it steams.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, dark color and a deep flavor.

The step that matters

Steaming the tins for two hours. Gentle, steady steam cooks the batter through without drying it, keeping the loaf moist and letting the baking soda lift it evenly. Uneven or weak steam can leave the bread heavy or underbaked 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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