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Bread

Boston Brown Bread

A steamed bread made with cornmeal, graham flour, wheat flour, raisins, molasses, sour milk or water, 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

Make the batter

  1. Combine cornmeal, graham flour, wheat flour, raisins, molasses, sour milk (or water), and baking soda in a large bowl. Mix until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a covered tin.

Steam

  1. Steam for 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + molassestop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Wheat + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Cornmeal
Provides the coarse, sturdy body that gives the bread its dense crumb.
Graham flour
Adds a hearty texture and nutty flavour while giving the loaf structure.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark colour and moisture, and gives the bread its characteristic flavour.
Sour milk or water
Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flours and activates the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of sour milk or molasses to release gas and lighten the crumb.

The step that matters

Steam for 4 hours. Steam keeps the batter moist while it sets, so the bread cooks through without drying out. Because the tin is covered, the water in the pot must be kept topped up so the bread does not scorch or cook unevenly.

“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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