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Nut Loaf

A loaf made from stale bread crumbs, pecan nuts, and pecan meats, baked with sage or thyme and optional salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Nut Loaf

Why it works: Bread and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Nut 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.

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix stale bread crumbs, crushed pecan nuts, whole or broken pecan meats, sage or thyme, and salt if using.

  2. Add enough hot water to moisten the mixture and let it sit for a few minutes.

  3. Add 1 cup or more of hot water to make it juicy.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  2. Serve with a vegetable dinner or mold and serve cold, garnished with parsley.

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. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  2. Nuts + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together111 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Meat + sagetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Stale bread crumbs
Provide the main bulk and absorb the hot water to hold the loaf together.
Crushed pecan nuts
Add fat and rich nutty flavor while binding the loaf.
Pecan meats
Add texture and visible pieces of nut throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Moistening with hot water. Bread crumbs need enough hot water to soften and absorb liquid evenly. Too little leaves the loaf dry and crumbly, while too much makes it soggy and slow to set in the oven.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, nuts, meat):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, nuts, meat. 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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