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Bread

Nut Bread

Nut Bread is a sweet bread made with flour, sugar, walnuts, milk, egg, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Nut Bread

Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nut 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).

Mix and bake

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, and chopped walnuts.

  2. Add the milk and egg to the dry ingredients and mix well.

  3. Pour the batter into a bread pan and let it stand for 20 minutes.

  4. Bake for 1 hour or 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the bread as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the bread rise and become light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Walnuts
Add texture and a nutty flavor throughout the bread.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.

The step that matters

Mixing the batter. Once the milk and egg are added, mixing only until combined keeps the batter tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the bread tough and dense.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, 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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