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Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made from cornmeal, rye meal, molasses, baking soda, and sour milk or buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Mix the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the Indian meal and rye meal together.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the molasses and baking soda.

  3. Pour the molasses mixture into the meal mixture.

  4. Add enough sour milk or buttermilk to make a soft batter that can be poured.

Steam

  1. Pour the batter into a greased steaming mold.

  2. Steam for five to six hours.

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

Indian meal (cornmeal)
Provides the bulk and the sturdy, crumbly structure of the bread.
Rye meal
Adds a denser texture and a deeper, earthier flavour to the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and helps the bread brown.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk or buttermilk to lift and lighten the batter.
Sour milk or buttermilk
Supplies liquid to form a pourable batter and its acid activates the baking soda.

The step that matters

Add enough sour milk or buttermilk for a soft, pourable batter. The liquid must hydrate the cornmeal and rye so the batter can rise and set evenly during long steaming. Too little leaves a dry, dense loaf, while too much makes it gummy and heavy.

“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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