Name: Punjab Nut Loaf
Ingredients: 2 cups crushed English walnuts; 1 teaspoon salt; 3 eggs; 1 cup cooked dalya (crushed wheat); 1 cup cooked browned rice; 2 tablespoons butter or ghee; ½ cup milk; ¼ cup cream; 2 teaspoons fresh sage or parsley, chopped fine

Why it works: Walnut and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 246 recipes. Both carry 1-hexanal, which smells fruit. The science ↓

Punjab 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.

Wash the rice and brown it in a pan over low heat until light golden.
Slightly brown the dalya before cooking.
Cook 3 tablespoons of browned dalya in ⅔ cup boiling water.
Brown the onion in the butter, then add the other seasonings and the dalya.
Mix the dalya mixture with the milk, cream, and beaten egg yolks.
Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture along with the crushed nuts and rice.
Turn the mixture into a buttered baking pan and bake for 1 hour at 350°F (175°C) until rich brown.
Garnish with parsley and serve with browned onions.

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.

Walnut + wheattop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together246 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
Walnut + sagetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together179 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together423 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, egg, wheat, rice, butter, milk, cream):

Nutmegfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Celeryfits better
Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, egg, wheat, rice, butter, milk, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.