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Bread

Nut Bread

Nut Bread is a loaf made with nuts, eggs, flour, milk, maple cream, sugar, salt, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Nut Bread

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Nut Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder) together.

Make the batter

  1. Add the eggs, maple cream, and milk to the dry mixture.

  2. Mix until well combined.

  3. Let the batter rise for 20 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 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).

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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the bread rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the bread together as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter while adding richness.
Milk
Adds moisture and hydrates the flour so the batter forms a dough.
Maple cream
Adds sweetness and moisture, and contributes to browning and flavor.
Chopped nuts
Add texture and flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise for 20 minutes. Baking powder needs time to start releasing gas, and the batter should be set in the pan promptly so the bubbles are trapped and the loaf rises evenly in the oven.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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