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Bread

Nut Bread with Raisins

A sweet bread made with flour, molasses, sugar, salt, baking soda, sour milk, raisins, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 with Raisins

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, molasses, sugar, salt, and baking soda dissolved in sour milk until well combined.

  2. Fold in the raisins and nuts.

  3. Pour the batter into greased loaf pans.

  4. Bake for about 1.5 hours or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 loaf together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture to the batter.
Molasses
Adds moisture, sweetness, and a darker color to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the bread and contributes to browning of the crust.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Quick breads can look browned on the outside while the center is still wet. A toothpick inserted into the thickest part shows whether the starch has set and the crumb is fully baked, so the loaf does not collapse or turn gummy.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

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

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