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Nut Roast

A baked mixture of ground nuts, bread crumbs, onions or tomatoes, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Nut Roast

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 the mixture

  1. Grind the nuts until you have enough to fill 2 cups.

  2. Mix the ground nuts with the bread crumbs.

  3. Grate the onions, discarding tough pieces.

  4. Mix the soft pulp and juice with the nut and crumb mixture to form a stiff paste.

  5. If using tomatoes, skin and mash 2 tomatoes instead of onions, or use 1 onion and 1 tomato.

Bake

  1. Grease a pie dish.

  2. Fill the pie dish with the mixture.

  3. Spread butter on top.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown.

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

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

  2. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Bread + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Bread + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Nuts + buttertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,291 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the nuts into a firm, sliceable mass.
Ground nuts
Provide the main body, fat and rich, toasty flavor of the roast.
Onions
Add moisture and savory flavor, softening during baking to keep the roast tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the top brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Form a stiff paste. The mixture must be stiff enough to hold its shape; too much juice from the onion or tomato makes the roast soggy and crumbly once sliced. Bread crumbs soak up liquid, so the pulp should be added gradually and the paste checked before filling the dish.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, butter):

  1. Lima beansfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, butter. 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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