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Boston Brown Bread
Take an equal quantity of corn-flour and rye-meal, a few tablespoonfuls of pumpkin, a little salt and a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda, half a cupful of yeast and a similar quantity of molasses, stirring in some warm water until it forms a paste. Have ready two well-buttered iron-pans and pour in this mixture, smooth the top with the hand, and when it has risen, bake in an oven quickly.
This is a terse professional note rather than a worked formula: no quantities are given for the two main meals, and the leavening assumes a liquid yeast that no longer exists in home kitchens. Read it as a proportion sketch and fill in the rest.
- Corn-flour means cornmealIn American books of this period "corn-flour" is the ground meal of maize, not cornstarch (the British sense) and not finely milled corn flour as sold today. Rye-meal is coarse rye flour. The recipe's equal quantities are one of several proportions used in the old "rye and Indian" breads, which ranged from equal parts to a third rye or less.
- Half a cupful of yeastThis is liquid yeast -- homemade barm or a wet baker's yeast -- roughly half a cup of active liquid, not half a cup of dry granules. One packet of modern dry yeast supplies comparable lift, but you must then add back the half cup of liquid it replaces.
- Soda and yeast togetherThe bicarbonate is not redundant. Molasses and rye ferment sour, and the soda both neutralises that acid and gives a second lift; it also darkens the crumb.
- The pumpkinCooked, mashed pumpkin, used for moisture and sweetness in the old New England manner. A few tablespoons in a loaf of this size is a background note, not a flavour you will identify.
- "Bake in an oven quickly"This points to a hot oven, though the book gives no temperature and does not use the term "quick oven." Be aware that a dense molasses-and-rye batter scorches at high heat before the centre sets; much nineteenth-century brown bread was steamed for two to three hours or baked at a moderate heat for well over an hour. Treat the crust colour as your warning.
- Iron pansSmall cast-iron loaf pans or a heavy round pan. Butter them thoroughly and fully -- rye and molasses stick badly, and the sugars in the molasses will weld to a thin film of grease.
- Rising time"When it has risen" means a yeast rise, not a quick-bread batter: expect an hour or more in a warm kitchen for a stiff paste of this kind. Do not wait for a doubling; rye and cornmeal will not give you one.
- YieldAs written it fills two small iron pans and makes two dense loaves. It slices best cold, the next day, thin, and it is at home with baked beans.
Brown bread of cornmeal and rye is New England household baking, descended from the colonial habit of stretching scarce wheat with what grew locally -- "rye and Indian" bread, Indian meaning maize. Its natural companion is Saturday-night baked beans, and it was often steamed in a covered mould or tin rather than baked, a treatment traditionally explained by the wetness of the molasses batter. Oscar Tschirky's inclusion of it among the Waldorf's kitchen notes in 1896 is a reminder that even a hotel trading in French service kept a shelf of plain American items for the breakfast and supper menus; the pumpkin here, and the reliance on a half-cupful of liquid yeast, both point back to an older domestic tradition.