Skip to main content
Bread

Raisin Loaf

A yeast bread loaf with raisins, cinnamon, and lemon peel, baked at 350°F for 45 minutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Raisin 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.

Make the rising

  1. In the evening or early morning, mix warm milk, flour, and yeast cake to create a rising.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, cream together butter, sugar, and egg.

  2. Work the creamed mixture into the rising, adding enough flour to form a soft dough.

  3. Add a pinch of cinnamon and grated lemon peel.

  4. Let the dough rise for four hours or until honeycombed.

  5. Fold in the floured raisins and place the dough in a pan.

  6. Let it rise again for about 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 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.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become honeycombed.
Flour
Provides the structure that forms the soft dough and holds the raisins.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough into a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and gentle browning in the crust.
Milk
Provides liquid to hydrate the flour and warmth to activate the yeast.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise for four hours or until honeycombed. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and build structure. Under-proofing leaves a dense loaf, while over-proofing can cause the dough to collapse and lose its rise in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

More raisin loaf recipes

Cake 19Currant Cake 7 See all 3 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes