Skip to main content
Bread

Graham Nut Bread

A loaf made with graham flour, walnuts, raisins, and sour milk, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Graham Nut Bread

Why it works: Flour and raisin 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 ↓

Graham Nut Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grind the walnut meats and raisins using a meat grinder.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sour milk, sugar, salt, baking soda, graham flour, and all-purpose flour in the order given.

  2. Fold in the ground walnut meats and raisins.

  3. Pour the batter into bread pans and let it stand for 20 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  5. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas that lifts the loaf.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in sour milk to release carbon dioxide, so the bread rises without yeast.
Graham flour
Its bran and germ add coarse texture and a nutty, wholesome flavor.
All-purpose flour
Provides gluten that gives the loaf structure and a lighter crumb.
Walnut meats
Add fat, crunch and a rich nutty flavor throughout the bread.
Raisins
Add moisture and natural sweetness, plus chewy pockets in the crumb.

The step that matters

Pour the batter into bread pans and let it stand for 20 minutes. Sour milk and baking soda start reacting as soon as they are mixed, so the batter should go into the pans promptly and be baked on time to trap the gas and keep the rise even.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour, meat, raisin. 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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes