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Dessert

English Bun-loaf

A sweet loaf made with bread dough, butter, egg, spices, raisins, and brown sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

English Bun-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 dough

  1. Cream the melted butter and shortening.

  2. Beat in the egg.

  3. Work the mixture into the risen dough.

  4. Add the spices, dissolved baking soda, and lastly the fruit.

  5. Knead for 2 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into a loaf or rolls.

  2. Let them stand for 30 minutes.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread dough
Provides the yeasted structure that traps gas and gives the loaf its crumb.
Butter or cottolene
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Egg
Adds protein that helps bind the enriched dough and firm up the crumb as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to release gas, adding lift.
Brown sugar
Sweetens the loaf and encourages browning at the surface.

The step that matters

Adding the dissolved baking soda. Baking soda must be fully dissolved and worked evenly into the dough so it reacts uniformly; clumps leave bitter spots and uneven rise.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Raisinthe original
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, egg, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, 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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