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Bread

Butterscotch Bread

A sweet loaf made with eggs, brown sugar, sour milk, flour, walnuts, and shortening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Butterscotch Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a large bowl.

  2. Add the brown sugar and melted shortening, and mix well.

  3. Sift the flour, then measure it and sift again with salt, baking soda, and baking powder.

  4. Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture alternately with the sour milk.

  5. Fold in the chopped walnuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased loaf pans.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaf its structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that lifts the loaf.
Baking powder
Provides additional lift as the batter heats in the oven.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a caramel-like flavor.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Alternate the dry ingredients with the sour milk. Adding the flour mixture in portions keeps the batter smooth and prevents overmixing. Overmixing develops too much gluten, which can make the loaf tough and dense.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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