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Dessert

Dutch Loaf

A sweet loaf made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, raisins, currants, baking soda, and buttermilk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dutch Loaf

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in buttermilk.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar together.

  2. Whisk the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the flour and buttermilk until well combined.

  4. Fold in the raisins and currants.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake slowly.

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. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the loaf together as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the bread and helps it brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the buttermilk's acidity to produce gas that lifts the loaf.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moist pockets of fruit throughout the bread.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in buttermilk. Baking soda needs an acid to react and release carbon dioxide. Buttermilk supplies that acidity, so the soda must be fully dissolved and mixed into the batter promptly, before the gas escapes and the loaf rises poorly.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, raisin, buttermilk. 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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