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Bread

Nut Bread

A sweet bread made with flour, nuts, milk, sugar, eggs, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Nut Bread

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nut Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Sift flour again with baking powder, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add broken nut meats and mix well.

  3. Beat in the eggs and then add the milk to form a soft dough.

Bake

  1. Pour into a well-buttered pan and let stand for 20 minutes.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 40 minutes.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and milk 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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the loaf rises in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and form a soft dough.
Nut meats
Add texture and flavor through pieces scattered throughout the loaf.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Add the milk to form a soft dough. Too much liquid makes the batter loose and heavy, while too little leaves dry flour that bakes unevenly. Adding the milk after the eggs and checking the texture keeps the dough soft and workable.

“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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