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Boston Brownbread
Sift together one cup, each, of yellow corn meal, rye meal and entire-wheat flour, one teaspoonful of salt and three teaspoonfuls of soda. Add threefourths a cup of molasses and one pint of thick, sour milk. Beat thoroughly, and steam in a covered mould three hours and a half. The quantity
A standard "thirds" brown bread, steamed rather than baked, included here as the base for the cream cheese and nut sandwiches popular around 1900. The verbatim text breaks off mid-sentence at the end, so the original's note on quantity is lost.
- Steam, do not bakeThe mould must be covered and set on a rack in a pot of simmering water reaching halfway up its side, lid on the pot, water topped up as it boils away. Dry oven heat gives a crusted loaf, not the moist close crumb this batter is designed for.
- Sour milkThick sour milk means naturally clabbered raw milk; cultured buttermilk is the direct substitute. A pint is 2 cups, and its acid is what drives the soda, so sweet milk will not work without adding acid.
- Rye meal and entire-wheat flourRye meal is coarsely ground whole rye, closer to a medium rye flour than to light rye. Entire-wheat flour is whole wheat. Neither is bolted, so measure by scooping and levelling rather than packing.
- Three teaspoonfuls of sodaThat is a lot of leavening even for 3 cups of meal. Two teaspoons is enough with a pint of buttermilk; the full three can leave a soapy edge and a grey crumb.
- MolassesUse unsulphured dark molasses, not blackstrap, which is bitter and will dominate. Three-quarters of a cup is a cup less four tablespoons if you are measuring by eye.
- The mouldA pudding mould with a clamped lid, or well-buttered cans covered with foil and tied. Fill no more than two-thirds; the batter is thin and rises considerably.
- Time and donenessThree and a half hours is the time the recipe gives for a single large mould; smaller cans will be done sooner. A skewer should come out clean and the loaf should pull slightly from the sides.
- Yield and servingOne large loaf. For sandwiches, cool completely and chill before slicing thin with a serrated knife, or the crumb tears.
Boston brown bread belongs to the New England tradition of steamed puddings and "thirds" breads, so called for the equal parts of cornmeal, rye and wheat that made up the loaf when wheat was the scarcest and most expensive of the three. Steaming in a covered mould over the fire predates the reliable home oven and survived long after it, partly because the method suits coarse, low-gluten meal and partly because molasses-sweetened steamed bread keeps well. It also figured in a turn-of-the-century fashion: thin slices of brown bread spread with cream cheese, sometimes with chopped nuts or a little cream, served at afternoon teas and luncheons, and often said to be paired with Saturday baked beans in the same kitchens.