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Nut Bread

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

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 nuts are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,180 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 the batter

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

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the beaten egg and sweet milk.

  3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for 30 minutes.

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 + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 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. Nuts + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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 structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the loaf rises.
Egg
Adds structure and binds the batter together.
Sweet milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and forms the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Adding the wet ingredients to the dry. Mixing well brings the batter together evenly, but overmixing develops gluten and can make the loaf tough and dense. Stir just until no dry flour remains.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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