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Diet Bread

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

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 ↓

Diet Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Sift and dry the flour.

  2. Beat the eggs.

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

Make the batter

  1. Mix the flour with the bruised caraway and coriander seeds.

  2. Continue beating until the mixture is combined.

  3. Pour the mixture into 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
Beaten eggs trap air, giving the cake its light, airy structure.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and, beaten with the eggs, helps stabilise the foam.
Fine flour
Provides the starch that sets during baking to form the cake's crumb.
Caraway seeds
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the bread.
Coriander seeds
Adds a citrusy, aromatic flavour to the bread.

The step that matters

Gradually add the sugar while beating. Adding sugar slowly while beating lets the egg foam hold its air. Dumping it in at once can collapse the foam, leaving a denser result once the cake bakes.

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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