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Bread

Currant Bread

A sweet bread made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, currants, sultanas, lemon peel, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Currant Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, sugar, and eggs together for 10 minutes, adding the eggs one at a time.

  2. Sift in the flour along with the volatile salts, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. Add the currants, sultanas, lemon peel, and lemon essence, then mix well with the milk.

Bake

  1. Line round or square tins with white paper and fill them with the batter to make 1 lb. loaves.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°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.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat in the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the loaf and helps it brown during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to lift the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the loaf rise.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter, sugar, and eggs. Beating air into the fat and sugar creates bubbles that help the loaf rise. Adding the eggs one at a time keeps the mixture emulsified so it does not curdle.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, lemon, cream, 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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