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Nut Bread

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Nut Bread

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nut Bread

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the yeast and sugar in 1 cup of lukewarm water for 1 hour.

  2. Combine mashed potatoes with 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 cup of boiling water; stir and let cool.

  3. Add the soaked yeast to the potato mixture, mix well, and let it sit overnight in a warm place.

  4. Add 1 quart of lukewarm water and enough flour to make a sponge batter; cover and let it rise.

  5. Once light, mix in 1 to 1½ cups sugar, ½ cup lard or butter, and 1 to 1½ cups nut meats; knead, adding flour as needed.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  3. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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