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American Brown Bread
Mix together two parts flour and one part each of corn-flour, rye-meal and molasses, beat thoroughly and add a well-beaten egg; mix and pour into a buttered-tin holding about two quarts and let it steam in a slow oven for four hours, and then bake in a quick oven for half an hour.
A very compressed version of steamed Boston brown bread, written for cooks who already knew the dish. Several things a modern reader needs are missing from the text rather than merely archaic in it.
- The recipe is measured in "parts"Nothing here is given in cups or ounces. For a two-quart mold, a workable reading is two cups flour to one cup each of cornmeal, rye meal and molasses, but the original does not say so and other proportions of the same ratio would fill a different tin.
- There is no liquid and no leaveningBeyond the egg, molasses is the only wet ingredient named, which will not hydrate three cups of meal, and no soda, baking powder or yeast appears. Period brown bread recipes commonly used buttermilk or sweet milk with saleratus (baking soda); the text reads as an abridgement rather than a complete formula, and milk and a raising agent are probably meant to be supplied.
- "Corn-flour"In an American context this most likely means cornmeal rather than cornstarch or the British corn flour, though the text does not say which. Fine yellow or white meal is a reasonable reading; stone-ground gives more grit.
- Rye-mealCoarse-ground whole rye, not the light sifted rye flour sold for sandwich loaves. Whole-grain or pumpernickel-grade rye flour is the nearest substitute.
- Oven temperaturesA slow oven is usually reckoned around 300F and a quick oven somewhere between 400 and 450F; the book itself gives no figures. The long slow stage is the steaming, the short hot stage is only to dry and firm the crust.
- "Steam in a slow oven" means a water bathThe buttered tin must be covered tightly — buttered foil or a lid, tied down — and set in a pan of hot water reaching partway up the mold. Uncovered in a dry 300F oven for four hours the loaf will simply bake hard and split.
- Four hours is not an exaggerationSteamed brown bread genuinely takes three to four hours in a two-quart mold; the long moist heat is what gives the dark colour and close, damp crumb. Top up the water bath as it evaporates.
- Yield and servingA two-quart mold gives a loaf serving eight to ten. Turn it out while warm, slice thick with a length of thread rather than a knife, and serve with butter or alongside baked beans.
Steamed brown bread is a New England survival: a loaf of cornmeal, rye and wheat — the old "thirds" or ryaninjun of colonial households — sweetened with molasses and cooked by long steaming rather than in the bread oven, a method often said to have suited hearths and small ranges where a long bake was impractical. Molasses arrived cheaply through the Atlantic trade, and the switch from yeast to saleratus in the nineteenth century made the loaf a quick weekly staple rather than a day's work. Its fixed partner is Boston baked beans, and the pairing is generally traced to Saturday-night suppers cooked ahead of the Sabbath.