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Bread

Persimmon Bread

A loaf of bread made with persimmon pulp, water, baking soda, yeast, shortening, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Persimmon and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Persimmon 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. Combine persimmon pulp and water in a bowl.

  2. Add baking soda and yeast, then mix well.

  3. Incorporate shortening and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  4. Set the dough aside to rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold the dough into a loaf and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Persimmon + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together63 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Persimmon pulp
Adds moisture and natural sweetness to the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the persimmon to give the loaf lift as it bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Flour
Provides the protein and starch that form the dough's structure.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs time to produce gas that gets trapped in the dough's gluten network. Stopping early gives a dense loaf, while letting it rise fully gives a light, open crumb.

“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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