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Bread

Nut and Raisin Bread

A yeasted bread made with flour, salt, baking powder, sugar, raisins, nuts, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Nut and Raisin 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.

Mix the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar.

  2. Add the raisins, nuts, and milk to the dry ingredients.

  3. Mix until combined and let the dough rise for 20 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until golden 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

White flour
Forms the main structure of the bread as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, causing the bread to rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture, and chewy pockets throughout the bread.
Nuts
Add fat, crunch, and a toasted flavour to the bread.

The step that matters

Mix until combined. Mixing only until the ingredients come together keeps the bread tender. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which makes the crumb tough and dense.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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