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Bread

Spice Bread

A sweet bread dough flavored with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and currants or raisins, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spice 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the brown sugar, butter or lard, and sweet milk until well combined.

  2. Add the cinnamon, cloves, and grated nutmeg, then stir in the currants or raisins.

  3. Gradually add flour to form a dough that is not as stiff as regular bread dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into two loaves and let them rise twice.

  2. Bake the loaves longer than regular bread at 350°F (175°C) 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown in the oven.
Butter or lard
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and carries the spice flavours.
Currants or raisins
Add sweet pockets of fruit that stay moist through baking.

The step that matters

Baking the loaves longer than regular bread. This dough is softer and sweeter than plain bread dough and holds more moisture. Underbaking leaves the centre gummy, while the sugar browns quickly, so bake until deeply golden and cooked through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg. 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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