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Bread

Quick Graham Bread

A quick bread made with graham flour, white flour, nuts, dates, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nuts and dates work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 178 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Quick Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, sift together the graham flour, white flour, baking powder, and salt several times.

Mix the batter

  1. Stir in the sugar, milk, chopped nuts, and dates until combined.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and shortening, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-buttered loaf pans or muffin rings.

  2. Bake 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. Nuts + datestop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together178 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + datestop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Graham flour
Provides the wholesome bran-rich body and nutty flavour that defines the loaf.
White flour
Adds gluten-forming structure so the loaf holds its shape despite the heavy graham flour.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the bread rises instead of staying dense.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking, giving structure and richness.
Dates
Add natural sweetness and moisture, keeping the crumb soft.
Shortening
Coats flour particles and tenderises the crumb, adding richness.

The step that matters

Sifting the dry ingredients. Sifting several times aerates the flour and evenly distributes the baking powder, so the leavening works uniformly and the bread rises evenly rather than in patches.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, milk, dates, egg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, dates, egg. 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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