Skip to main content
Bread

Boston Brown-bread

A yeast bread made with flour, cornmeal, rye, molasses, and optional raisins, steamed or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the starter

  1. Dissolve the yeast in ¾ pint of water and stir in 1 cup of flour.

  2. Let the mixture rise for 5 hours.

Mix and bake

  1. Stir in 1 quart of water, baking soda, salt, molasses, cornmeal, and rye flour.

  2. Add raisins if desired.

  3. Pour the batter into a pan.

  4. Steam or bake for 5 hours.

  5. If steamed, remove from the pan.

  6. If steamed, place in the oven for a few minutes to dry.

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. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rye + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Yeast
Ferments the starter, producing gas that lightens the batter before baking.
Cornmeal
Provides the coarse, dense body and gritty texture typical of this bread.
Rye flour
Adds earthy flavor and moisture-holding body to the dense crumb.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep color and moisture to the loaf.
All-purpose flour
Adds gluten-forming structure to the starter so it can rise.

The step that matters

Let the starter rise fully before mixing. The yeast needs the full 5 hours to ferment the starter; a shortened rise leaves the batter dense because too little gas is produced to lighten the crumb.

“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.

More boston brown bread recipes

Ice Cream 3 See all 349 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes