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Bread

Diet Bread, Which Keeps Moist

A moist bread made with sugar, water, flour, and eggs, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Diet Bread, Which Keeps Moist

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sugar syrup

  1. Dissolve the sugar in water.

  2. Boil the sugar solution.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, whisk the eggs together.

  2. Gradually mix the boiled sugar solution with the eggs.

  3. Add the flour gradually, beating for about 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased tin mold (6 inches long, 4 inches deep).

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift as they are beaten into the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the baked crumb together.
Lump sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the crumb a tender texture.

The step that matters

Add the flour gradually, beating for about 10 minutes. Adding flour slowly while beating keeps the batter smooth and evenly mixed, and the gluten in the flour develops gradually, so the crumb stays light rather than tough or lumpy.

“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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