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Bread

Nut Bread

Nut Bread is a baked loaf made with flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, sweet milk, egg, and walnuts.

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 walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 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

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

  2. Add the sweet milk and beaten egg to the dry ingredients.

  3. Fold in the broken walnuts.

  4. Let the mixture rise for 20 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the bread rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter as it sets in the oven.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty flavour to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure as its starch sets during baking.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and tenderness to the crumb.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise for 20 minutes. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet, so the batter should rise before baking. Delaying the bake or overmixing after folding in the walnuts can knock out gas and leave a denser loaf.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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