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Bread

Oriental Fruit Bread

A sweet bread made with dates, raisins, and coarse wheat, baked slowly in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flaxseed share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Oriental Fruit Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine lukewarm water, salt, and olive oil.

  2. Add most of the dates to the water.

  3. Gradually mix in enough coarse ground wheat to achieve a thick, dry dough.

  4. Prepare the dough the night before baking.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, add the remaining dates and half a pound of raisins.

  2. Knead the mixture with your hands until it reaches a gum-like consistency.

  3. Layer the dough and raisins in a covered baking pan.

  4. Cover the pan and place it in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

  5. Fill a large pan with water and place it at the bottom of the oven.

  6. Bake the bread for six hours, ensuring the water pan remains filled.

  7. Alternatively, steam the bread in pails for six hours, ensuring no water enters the pails.

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. Wheat + flaxseedtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together68 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Olive + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,100 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Olive + flaxseedtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Dates + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together358 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Dates + wheattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Dates
Provide sweetness and moist, chewy body to the bread.
Coarse ground wheat
Forms the thick dough that gives the bread its structure.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of moisture throughout the loaf.
Olive oil
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.

The step that matters

Keeping the water pan filled during the six-hour bake. Long baking with steam keeps the surface moist so the bread stays soft and does not dry out or crack. If the water runs low, the loaf loses moisture and the texture turns dense and dry.

Swap the flaxseed

The recipe marks flaxseed as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, dates, wheat, raisin):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Flaxseedthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, dates, wheat, raisin. 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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