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Bread

Sweet Bread

A sweet raisin bread made by fermenting dough overnight and baking at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,781 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Sweet Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Grind the raisins in a vegetable grinder.

  2. In a bowl, mix the lukewarm water, salt, and oil until combined.

  3. Stir in the ground raisins until they seem dissolved.

  4. Add home-ground wheat until the mixture reaches a firm consistency.

  5. Cover the dish with a cloth and let it sit overnight.

  6. Knead the dough as you would for unfermented Oriental bread.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 2 to 2.5 hours in covered pans.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Almond + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Raisin + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Seeded raisins
Add sweetness and moisture, and break down into the dough as it rests.
Home-ground wheat
Provides the flour structure that gives the dough its firm body.
Almond oil or olive oil
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough sit overnight. The long rest lets the flour fully hydrate and the dough relax, which makes kneading easier and affects the final texture. Covering it keeps the surface from drying out.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, wheat):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, wheat. 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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