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Nut Bread

A yeast bread with nuts and whole wheat flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Nut Bread

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Nut Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Scald the milk and water together.

  2. Pour the mixture over the sugar, salt, and lard.

  3. Let the mixture cool until medium hot.

  4. Add the sifted flour and beat for ten minutes.

  5. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water.

  6. Add the dissolved yeast to the mixture.

  7. Cover the mixture.

  8. Let it rise until very light.

  9. Add the chopped nuts and whole wheat flour.

  10. Mix to form a soft, sticky dough.

  11. Place the dough in a buttered bowl.

  12. Let it rise until it doubles in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in pans, filling each half full.

  3. Let them rise until the pans are full.

  4. Bake for one hour.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Nuts + wheattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Sifted flour
Provides the gluten structure that traps gas and holds the loaf together.
Whole wheat flour
Adds structure and a denser, nutty texture to the loaf.
Milk
Adds richness, softness, and some browning from its milk sugars.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light before adding the nuts and flour. Yeast needs time to build gas and gluten needs to develop before more flour is added. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse in the oven.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, flour, sugar, wheat):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, sugar, wheat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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