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Bread

Dutch Bread

A sweet yeast bread with sugar, butter, and cinnamon topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dutch Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread sponge, sugar, eggs, milk, butter, and lard.

  2. Add flour gradually until the mixture is stiff enough to stir with a spoon.

  3. Let the dough rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Transfer the dough into pans.

  2. Wash the top with cream and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, adding a little butter on top.

  3. Let it stand until light again.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread sponge
Provides the yeast-leavened starter that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the crumb set and bake tender.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning on the sprinkled top.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the dough and helps browning.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness, flavor and a softer crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that shortens the crumb, making it tender.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light. The dough must rise fully before shaping, because the yeast gas trapped in the gluten network creates the bread's airy texture. Underproofed dough bakes dense, while overproofed dough can collapse.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, milk, butter, flour, cream. 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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