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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed and baked bread made with graham flour, cornmeal, sour milk, molasses, raisins, salt, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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

Mix the batter

  1. Sift salt and baking soda with the corn meal, then mix with the graham flour.

  2. Add the sour milk and beat well.

  3. Stir in the molasses.

  4. Fold in the raisins.

Steam and finish

  1. Pour the mixture into baking powder cans and steam for 4 hours.

  2. Set in the oven for 20 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Graham flour
Provides the main structure and a hearty, slightly nutty body to the bread.
Corn meal
Adds a coarse, crumbly texture and helps the loaf hold its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Sour milk
Supplies acid for the baking soda and moisture that keeps the crumb tender.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and the dark color typical of this bread.
Raisins
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy bites throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Steaming the batter. Steam heats the batter gently and evenly, so the loaf cooks through without drying out. Baking soda reacts with the sour milk's acid to lift the batter, and that lift depends on the batter being cooked slowly and moist rather than rushed.

“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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