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Bread

Nut Graham Bread

A nutty bread made with white flour, graham flour, sugar, and sour milk, baked with baking powder and soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nuts are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,180 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Nut Graham Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the batter

  1. Sift together white flour and granulated sugar.

  2. Add Graham flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Dissolve soda in hot water and stir into sour milk.

  4. Beat all ingredients together and add ground nuts.

  5. Let stand for 15 minutes in a round coffee can or baking powder cans.

Bake

  1. Cover and bake in a cooker with one hot plate below and one above for 40 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the soda to produce gas, helping the bread rise.
Soda
Reacts with the acid in the sour milk to lift the batter.
Graham flour
Provides the bulk of the structure and a coarse, hearty texture.
White flour
Adds gluten for structure, giving the loaf a lighter crumb.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown.
Ground nuts
Add fat and flavour, and a moist, rich texture.

The step that matters

Dissolving the soda in hot water before adding it to the sour milk. Soda needs an acid to release carbon dioxide. If it is not evenly dispersed in the batter, pockets of bitter residue and uneven rising can occur, so mix it thoroughly into the sour milk.

Swap the nuts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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