Name: Nut Bread
Ingredients: 4 cups flour; 4 tablespoons sugar; ¾ teaspoon salt; 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder; 2 eggs; 1 cup milk; 1 tablespoon melted butter; 1 cup raisins; 1 cup nuts

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Prepare the batter

Sift together flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder.
Beat the eggs until light, then add the milk.
Combine the egg mixture with the dry ingredients.
Stir in melted butter, raisins, and nuts.

Bake

Pour the batter into a square pan.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 35 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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together490 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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: Provides the structure that holds the bread together as it bakes.
Eggs: Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder: Releases gas in the batter, making the bread rise and turn light.
Milk: Adds moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the crumb.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown lightly in the oven.

Swap the nuts

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

Almondfits better
Chestnutfits better
Pistachiofits better
Nutsthe original

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