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Bread

Nut Bread

Nut Bread is a yeast-leavened bread with nuts, sweet milk, butter, lard, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Nut Bread

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Nut 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.

Make the sponge

  1. Scald the milk and add the butter and lard until melted.

  2. Stir in the salt and sugar, then let the mixture cool to lukewarm.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water and add it to the mixture, beating well.

  4. Add enough flour to make a thin batter and let it rise overnight in a cool room.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, dissolve the baking soda in warm water and mix it into the batter.

  2. Whip the eggs until frothy and add them to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the broken nuts.

  4. Gradually add bread flour until the dough is like biscuit dough, not too stiff.

  5. Let the dough rise until light, then punch it down.

  6. Let it rise again, then punch it down once more.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into small loaves and let them rise for 25 minutes.

  2. Bake 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Whipped eggs add structure and richness to the dough as they set in the oven.
Bread flour
Gluten from the flour forms the network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.
Yeast
Yeast produces carbon dioxide, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter and lard
Fats add tenderness and richness, softening the crumb.
Pecans or black walnuts
Broken nuts add flavor, texture and fat to the loaf.
Baking soda
Baking soda reacts with the batter's acidity to add lift and help the crumb rise.

The step that matters

Gradually adding the bread flour. Adding flour in stages lets you judge the dough's consistency. Too much flour makes the dough stiff and dense, which limits gluten development and rise.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansthe original
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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