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English Nut Bread

A sweet bread made with eggs, brown sugar, sour milk, flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nuts, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English 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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the egg, brown sugar, sour milk, flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon until well combined. Fold in the chopped nuts and raisins.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan.

Bake and rest

  1. Bake for 1 hour, or until a straw inserted in the center comes out dry.

  2. Let the bread cool in a bread box for 1-2 days for better flavor.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the bread sets.
Sour milk
Supplies moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda to lift the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that makes the bread rise.
All-purpose flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaf its structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a deeper caramel flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Testing for doneness with a straw. Baking soda and sour milk raise the loaf quickly, but the center can stay wet if underbaked. A straw inserted in the center should come out dry, confirming the crumb has set before cooling.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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