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Dessert

Plain Stollen

A German fruit bread made with milk, yeast, eggs, sugar, butter, raisins, currants, citron, mace, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Plain Stollen

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Make a light sponge with 1½ quarts of milk and the yeast.

  2. When the sponge is ready, add the remaining ½ quart of milk, sugar, eggs, and flavorings.

  3. Incorporate the butter and mix to form a medium firm dough.

Add fruit and bake

  1. Work in the fruit, let it rise, then knead again.

  2. Scale the dough and proceed with baking.

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

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

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Raisin + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sponge so the dough rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the dough.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough.
Raisins
Add moisture and sweetness throughout the bread.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and forms the dough.

The step that matters

Make a light sponge. The sponge is a yeast pre-ferment that must be fully active before the rest of the ingredients are added. Working it into a dough too early or with a weak sponge leaves the dough slow to rise and dense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, butter, raisin, currant, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, butter, raisin, currant, lemon. 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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