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Raisin and Orange Loaf

A loaf made from bread batter, raisins, orange peel, sugar, butter or lard, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Raisin and Orange Loaf

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.

Make the dough

  1. Prepare bread batter using any good recipe.

  2. Let it rise for at least one hour.

  3. Set aside 1 quart of the batter for the orange loaf.

  4. Add sugar, butter or lard, eggs, raisins, and orange peel to the batter.

  5. Mix in enough flour to knead easily.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape into a loaf and let it rise until doubled in size.

  2. Bake for one hour at 300°F (150°C).

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Butter and flour 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

Bread batter
Forms the base dough that gives the loaf its structure and bulk.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough, adding structure to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Butter or lard
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the loaf.
Orange peel
Adds bright citrus aroma and flavour to the dough.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

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