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Bread

Dutch Loaf

A sweet yeast bread with butter, sugar, currants, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Dutch Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Prepare the sponge the evening before baking by mixing 1½ cups milk with enough flour to form a thick batter and a little salt, then add 1⅓ cups yeast.

  2. Let the sponge rise overnight until light.

Mix and bake

  1. In the morning, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the cinnamon, currants, and the prepared sponge to the mixture.

  3. Gradually add flour until a dough forms.

  4. Butter a baking pan and pour in the mixture.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light and cooked through.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sponge
Ferments with yeast overnight, making the dough light and airy.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps browning in the oven.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the loaf.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the loaf together as it rises and bakes.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise overnight until light. The yeast needs enough time to ferment the sponge; underproofed sponge gives a dense loaf that rises poorly in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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