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Boston Brown Bread
One heaping coffee-cup each of corn, rye and Graham meal. The rye meal should be as fine as the Graham, or rye flour may be used. Sift the three kinds together as closely as possible, and beat together thoroughly with two cups New Orleans or Porto Rico molasses, two cups sweet milk, one cup sour milk, one dessert-spoon soda, one tea-spoon salt; pour into a tin form, place in a kettle of cold water, put on and boil four hours. Put on to cook as soon as mixed. It may appear to be too thin, but it is not, as this recipe has never been known to fail. Serve warm, with baked beans or Thanksgiving. turkey. The bread should not quite fill the form (or a tin pail with cover will answer), as it must have room to swell. See that the water does not boil up to the top of the form; also take care it does not boil entirely away or stop boiling. To serve it, remove the lid and set it a few moments into the open oven to dry the top, and it will then turn out in perfect shape. This bread can be used as a pudding, and served with a sauce made of thick sour cream, well sweetened and seasoned with nutmeg; or it is good toasted the next day. -Mrs. H. S. Stevens, Minneapolis, Minn.
A steamed three-grain loaf of the classic New England type, scaled generously — this makes enough for two 1-quart molds. The hinge is the water bath: it must boil steadily for the full four hours without going dry and without rising high enough to flood the mold.
- The coffee-cupA coffee cup in this period is usually read as roughly a standard cup, though the measure was never standardised and some sources make it smaller; "heaping" adds more again. Use one generously heaped cup each of cornmeal, rye meal and Graham flour and you will be within the intent.
- The mealsCorn meal here is ordinary fine or medium yellow cornmeal; Graham is coarse whole-wheat flour milled with the bran and germ, sold today as graham or stone-ground whole wheat. Rye meal is coarser than rye flour, and the recipe already tells you flour is acceptable.
- MolassesNew Orleans and Porto Rico were trade grades of cane molasses, dark but not bitter -- unsulphured full-flavour molasses is the match. Blackstrap is harsher than what is wanted here, and two full cups of it would dominate the loaf.
- Sour milkThis means naturally soured raw milk, which pasteurized milk will not reproduce. Use cultured buttermilk cup for cup; its acidity is what the soda works against.
- Dessert-spoon of sodaA dessert-spoon is two teaspoons. That is the whole leavening, working with the sour milk and the molasses, so measure it level and mix without delay — the batter starts reacting at once, which is why the original says to put it on to cook as soon as mixed.
- The formA "tin form" is a covered pudding mold; a tin pail with a lid, or coffee cans covered with foil and tied, do the same job. The recipe asks only that the batter not quite fill the mold, so leave clear headroom and cover it, or the loaf will push its lid off as it swells.
- The water bathSet the mold on a rack or folded cloth in a deep kettle, add water to come halfway to two-thirds up the sides, and keep it at a steady low boil. Top up with boiling — not cold — water as it evaporates.
- Timing and donenessFour hours is right for a large mold; smaller cans are done in two to two and a half. A skewer should come out clean, and the brief spell in an open oven genuinely helps the loaf release.
- Yield and keepingThis is a large batch and will want dividing between molds. Cut with a taut string or serrated knife rather than pressing down with a blade, and toast any that survives to the second day.
Boston brown bread is the survivor of a long New England habit of steaming breads rather than baking them, a practical answer for households with a hearth kettle but no reliable oven, and the reason it is still eaten as a cylinder rather than a loaf. The mixture of corn, rye and wheat is old enough to have its own name -- "thirds bread" or "rye and Injun" in earlier forms -- and reflects a colonial grain economy in which wheat was the expensive part and cornmeal the cheap bulk. Molasses did the sweetening because West Indian cane syrup arrived in New England ports in quantity long before refined sugar was an everyday purchase; New Orleans and Porto Rico were recognised trade grades of the period. Its pairing with baked beans is the familiar Saturday-supper tradition, and the appearance of a Minneapolis contributor shows how far the dish had traveled, carried west with the people who grew up on it.