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Diet Bread Case

A sweet bread made with sugar, eggs, flour, and water, baked in a warm oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Diet Bread Case

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the water.

  2. Line square tins with white paper.

Make the batter

  1. Dissolve the lump sugar in the boiled water.

  2. Whisk the egg yolks until combined.

  3. Pour the sugar mixture into the egg yolks.

  4. Whisk until cold, about 15 minutes.

  5. Stir in the sifted flour until well combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the tins three-quarters full with the batter.

  2. Sprinkle a little sugar on top.

  3. Bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Once baked, remove the bread from the molds while hot.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provide structure and richness as their proteins set during baking.
Flour
Forms the starch and gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Lump sugar
Sweetens the bread and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Whisk until cold. The sugar syrup is hot when poured into the eggs, so whisking until it cools keeps the eggs from scrambling and lets the mixture settle before the flour is added. Adding flour to a batter that is still hot can cook the eggs unevenly and make the crumb dense.

“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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