Skip to main content
Bread

English Currant Loaves

A yeasted loaf made with mashed potatoes, currants, raisins, citron, and sweet lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

English Currant Loaves

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Boil the potatoes until soft.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes finely.

  3. Return the mashed potatoes to part of the cooking water.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Dissolve the yeast cake in lukewarm water.

  6. Add the dissolved yeast to the potato mixture.

  7. Stir in enough flour to make a soft batter.

  8. Beat the batter well.

  9. Sprinkle flour over the sponge.

  10. Let the sponge rise in a warm place overnight.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add grated nutmeg, salt, lard, and enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Knead the dough for 45 minutes.

  3. Let the dough rise until doubled in size.

  4. Incorporate currants, raisins, chopped citron, and brown sugar into the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into three loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in pans to rise for about 2 hours.

  3. Bake 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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch and moisture keep the dough soft and help it hold gas as it rises.
Yeast
Its fermentation produces carbon dioxide, which makes the sponge and dough rise.
Flour
Its proteins form gluten, giving the dough structure to trap gas and hold the loaf shape.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a richer texture.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and fruitiness, and small pockets of moisture throughout the loaf.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture that softens as the loaves bake.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise overnight in a warm place. The yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the potato batter; a cool or short rise leaves the dough dense and under-risen, and the gas it builds gives the later loaves their lightness.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

Potato BreadPotato Bread124 recipesCornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipes