Skip to main content
Main

Soy Bean Loaf

A baked loaf made from cooked soybeans, cheese, breadcrumbs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soy Bean Loaf

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the soybeans as for Baked Soy Beans.

Make the loaf

  1. Grate the cheese and mix it with the beans.

  2. Moisten the mixture with soup stock or white sauce.

  3. Add bread crumbs until the mixture is stiff enough to form a loaf.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C), basting frequently with water mixed with melted butter and lemon juice.

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.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Soybean + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together93 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked soybeans
Form the bulk of the loaf and give it a hearty, firm body.
Cheese
Adds richness and flavor, and helps bind the beans together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture so the mixture firms up enough to hold a loaf shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown during basting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich cheese.

The step that matters

Adding bread crumbs until the mixture is stiff enough to form a loaf. Bread crumbs absorb the liquid from the stock or white sauce. If the mixture stays too wet, the loaf will be soft and may collapse when sliced.

Swap the soybean

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sauce, cheese, lemon, onion, pepper, butter):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Sesamefits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Soybeanthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sauce, cheese, lemon, onion, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes