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Bread

Diet Bread

A sweet bread made with fine 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: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. 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 fine flour.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs, then gradually add the loaf sugar while continuing to beat for 1.5 hours.

  2. Remove the flour from the heat and mix in the bruised caraway and coriander seeds.

  3. Continue beating until fully combined, then pour into a paper mold or hoop.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + coriandertop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,749 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 into a foam that traps air, giving the bread its light structure as it sets.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the bread and helps stabilize the beaten egg foam.
Fine flour
Provides starch that sets to give the bread its body once baked.
Caraway seeds
Add a distinctive aroma and flavor to the bread.
Coriander seeds
Add a warm, citrusy aroma to the bread.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar. The batter depends on a stable foam of eggs and sugar. Adding sugar gradually and beating for the full time builds and holds the air that lifts the bread. Under-beaten batter bakes dense and flat.

Swap the coriander

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

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

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