Skip to main content
Bread

Nut Bread

Nut Bread is a yeast bread made with milk, molasses, white and whole wheat flour, nuts, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Nut Bread

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Nut 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. Scald the milk.

  2. Soften the yeast in lukewarm water and add it to the milk.

  3. Mix in the molasses, white flour, and salt, then knead the dough.

  4. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size.

  5. Add the nuts, broken into small pieces, and mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and bake for 50 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + nutstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
White flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaf structure and chew.
Whole wheat flour
Adds body, a nutty flavor, and a denser crumb to the loaf.
Molasses
Adds sweetness and flavor, and feeds the yeast while it rises.
Milk
Adds richness and softness to the crumb and helps browning.
Nuts
Add crunch and a rich, toasted flavor throughout the bread.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until it doubles. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas that expands the gluten network. Under-proofed dough bakes up dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse and lose structure.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses, flour, wheat):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Flaxseedfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses, flour, wheat. 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.

More nut bread recipes

Graham 7Hickory 5Banana 4Brown 4 See all 103 →

You might also like

Wheat BreadWheat Bread65 recipesWhole Wheat BreadWhole Wheat Bread55 recipesBarley Wheat BreadBarley Wheat Bread6 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipes