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Fruit Bread

Fruit Bread is a yeast loaf containing raisins, walnuts, currants, hickory nuts, brown sugar, cinnamon, prunes, cloves, apples, anise, pears, lemon, citron, almonds, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Fruit Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Cook each type of dried fruit separately.

  2. Once cooled, remove the pits from the prunes.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in the juice of the cooked fruits.

Make the dough

  1. Add enough flour to create a sponge and let it rise.

  2. Once risen, mix in the chopped fruit, nuts, sugar, and spices.

  3. Add more flour to make a stiff dough and let it rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves, let them rise until light, and then bake.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + appletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Clove + appletop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,774 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments and leavens the dough so it rises into a light loaf.
Flour
Forms the sponge and stiff dough that gives the loaves their structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown as it bakes.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the bread.
Prunes
Add moisture, sweetness and a soft, dense texture to the loaves.
Walnuts
Add crunch and richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Dissolve the yeast in the juice of the cooked fruits. Yeast needs a warm, sugary liquid to activate; the fruit juice supplies sugar for fermentation. Yeast that is not fully dissolved or is too hot can fail, so the dough may not rise properly.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raisin, walnut, nuts, sugar, cinnamon, clove, apple):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, walnut, nuts, sugar, cinnamon, clove, apple. 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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