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Bread

Excellent Diet Bread

A sweet bread made with flour, eggs, sugar, caraway, and coriander.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Caraway and coriander match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 185 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-decenal, which smells green, must. The science ↓

Excellent Diet Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift the flour and dry it by the fire.

  2. Beat the eggs for a short time.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat for 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the flour from the fire and let it cool.

  3. Mix in the crushed caraway and coriander seeds.

  4. Continue beating until the mixture is ready to be placed in a paper mold.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 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. Caraway + coriandertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together185 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 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. Flour + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Whipped into a foam that traps air, helping the bread rise and giving it a light crumb.
Fine flour
Provides the structure that sets as the bread bakes around the trapped air.
Soft loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilise the egg foam as it is beaten.
Caraway seeds
Contribute a warm, aromatic flavour to the bread.
Coriander seeds
Contribute a citrusy, aromatic flavour to the bread.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar. Long beating whips air into the eggs and sugar to form a stable foam. This foam is what lifts the batter in the oven, so under-beating leaves a dense, heavy loaf.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

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