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Bread

Nut Bread

Nut bread made with flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, egg, milk, and walnuts, baked at 300°F.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix baking powder, flour, walnuts, sugar, and salt together.

  2. Beat the egg into the milk and add to the dry ingredients.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 20 minutes in a warm place to rise.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 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.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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. Milk + walnuttop 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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, lifting the loaf so it rises without yeast.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the batter and set during baking.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture, helping the batter form a soft crumb.
Walnuts
Add fat, texture, and a toasty flavour to the crumb.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand before baking. Baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it meets liquid, so the batter should be baked soon after it rests. Standing in a warm place helps the leavening work, and letting the batter sit too long can lose lift in the oven.

Swap the walnut

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, 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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