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Bread

Raisin or Currant Bread

A loaf of bread made with raisins and a sponge dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Raisin or Currant Bread

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. Prepare a quart of sponge as you would for plain bread.

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine the sponge, egg, sugar, and shortening.

  3. Add the floured raisins and knead the dough, using less flour than usual.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough and place it in a greased loaf pan.

  2. Let it rise until doubled in size, then bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provides the yeast-leavened base that makes the loaf rise and gives it its bread structure.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough, supporting a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the loaf and helps the crust brown during baking.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps the bread soft.
Seeded raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the loaf.

The step that matters

Knead with less flour than usual. Raisins and the enriched dough are already soft and sticky, so extra flour can make the loaf dense and dry. Keeping the dough slightly tacky preserves a moist, tender crumb.

“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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