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Bread

Rtb Bread

A yeast‑leavened loaf made with wheat and rye flour, eggs, butter, and a butter‑nutmeg glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and rye match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rtb Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Combine wheat flour, rye flour, and coarse sea salt in a large bowl.

  2. Dissolve yeast in warm water.

  3. Add the yeast mixture to the flour mixture to form a stiff dough.

  4. Let the dough rise for 3 hours.

  5. Shape the dough into a large loaf.

Make the filling

  1. In a separate bowl, mix the curds from the milk with the egg yolks, egg white, grated bread, flour, and a little salt.

  2. Form the mixture into small loaves.

  3. Bake the small loaves in the preheated oven for 45 minutes.

Bake and finish

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake the loaf for 3 hours.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the butter, clear water, grated nutmeg, and sugar.

  4. Heat the mixture until thick, stirring constantly.

  5. Once the small loaves are baked, cut off the tops.

  6. Stir the crumbs inside the loaves.

  7. Pour some of the butter mixture into each loaf.

  8. Replace the tops on each loaf.

  9. Beat the egg yolk with a little beer.

  10. Brush the beaten yolk over the loaves.

  11. Bake the loaves again.

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 + ryetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + ryetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together359 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour
Forms the main gluten structure that holds the dough together.
Rye flour
Adds a denser texture and deeper flavour to the bread.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Egg yolks
Add richness, colour and binding to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a soft, moist crumb.

The step that matters

Heat the butter mixture until thick, stirring constantly. Constant stirring prevents the butter and sugar mixture from scorching on the base of the pan and keeps it smooth as it thickens.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, flour, rye, egg, bread, butter, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour, rye, egg, bread, butter, sugar. 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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