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Boston Brown Bread
One cup rye meal or rye flour, one cup of corn meal, one cup of graham flour, one even teaspoon salt, one-half cup of molasses, two cups of sweet milk, three even teaspoons baking powder; mix the dry ingredients together, then mix the molasses and milk together and add slowly to the dry ingredients, beating thoroughly. Put into four one-pound baking powder cans which have been well buttered, cover the cans and steam three hours. N. B. Rye meal can be purchased at Park & Tilford's, New York city.
— Mrs. Stanley Vincent
A straightforward steamed brown bread of the New England type, thickened with three meals rather than one and leavened with baking powder instead of the older soda-and-sour-milk. Nothing here is dangerous; the only real skill is managing a long, steady steam.
- The hinge: gentle, unbroken steamThe water must stay at a bare simmer for the full three hours and must never boil dry. Set the covered cans on a rack in a deep pot, pour boiling water halfway up their sides, keep the lid on, and top up with more boiling water as needed.
- "One-pound baking powder cans"These held roughly 2 cups. Clean 14-16 oz cans, 1-pint straight-sided jars, or small pudding molds all work; fill each only two-thirds full to leave room for rise. Butter them well and cover with buttered foil tied down, or a lid set on loosely so steam can escape.
- Rye meal and Park & TilfordPark & Tilford was a well-known New York grocery firm; the note points readers to a shop where the ingredient could be bought. Whole rye flour is the easy substitute today, and coarse rye meal (sometimes sold as pumpernickel meal) gives the grainier texture.
- Graham flourCoarse whole-wheat flour, named for Sylvester Graham. Modern stone-ground whole wheat is the closest match; ordinary whole-wheat flour works but yields a smoother crumb.
- Sweet milkPlain fresh whole milk, as opposed to the soured milk or buttermilk called for in soda-leavened versions. Since this recipe leavens with baking powder, keep to sweet milk.
- MolassesUse unsulphured cooking molasses. Blackstrap is far more bitter than what was meant here and will dominate the rye.
- MixingWhisk the baking powder and salt evenly through the three meals before any liquid goes in; the batter is stiff and will not redistribute leavening once wet. It should pour thickly, like a heavy muffin batter.
- Doneness and yieldA skewer pushed to the bottom should come out clean and the loaf should pull slightly from the sides. Four small cylindrical loaves, each cutting into six or eight rounds. Turn them out hot and let them dry a few minutes, or the outsides stay clammy.
- ServingTraditionally sliced with a string or a thin blade rather than sawed, and eaten warm with butter, cream cheese, or baked beans. It keeps several days wrapped and re-steams well.
Steamed brown bread belongs to the New England kitchen of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when household ovens were unreliable or absent and a covered pot over the fire was the surer bet. The mix of rye, cornmeal and wheat reflects what grew and milled locally: rye and corn were the northern staples, and the combination is old enough that "rye and Indian" bread appears in American cookery long before the name "Boston brown bread" attached itself to the loaf, a name usually linked, though not documented, to the dish's association with Saturday-night baked beans. What dates this particular version is the baking powder: chemical leavening was increasingly replacing the older saleratus-and-sour-milk method in home recipes by the turn of the century, and the empty tins served as molds here, though the cylindrical shape of brown bread cannot be traced to baking powder cans alone. Mrs. Vincent's aside about Park & Tilford suggests rye meal was a specialty item to be fetched from New York.