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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed and baked rye and cornmeal bread with molasses and sour milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Rye and milk work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 918 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Boston Brown Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Mix the rye meal and cornmeal together evenly.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in boiling water.

  3. Add the dissolved soda and molasses to the sour milk and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into the combined meals, add salt, and stir thoroughly.

Steam and bake

  1. Pour the batter into a well-greased 2-quart bread mold, cover with a lid, and steam for 5 hours.

  2. Remove the lid, place the mold in the oven, and bake for 30 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 + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together918 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Rye meal
Adds a dense, hearty structure and a deep, earthy flavour to the crumb.
Cornmeal
Gives the bread its coarse, crumbly texture and body.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and adds tang.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to produce gas that leavens the bread.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture and a dark colour to the finished loaf.

The step that matters

Steaming the covered mold. Steam keeps the bread moist during the long cook and lets the leavening work gently before the batter sets. Keep the lid sealed and check the water level so the bread does not dry out or turn gummy.

“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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