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Bread

Quick Bread

A quick bread made with egg, milk, flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, pecans, and shortening.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Quick Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg until light.

  2. Add the milk and graham or whole wheat flour.

  3. Sift together the white flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar, then add to the mixture.

  4. Finally, add the pecans and melted shortening.

  5. Mix everything together and pour into greased and floured loaf pans.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until well done.

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. Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

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

  2. Wheat + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the quick bread rise without yeast.
White flour
Builds the main structure of the loaf as its proteins set during baking.
Graham or whole wheat flour
Adds bran and coarser texture, giving the loaf a heartier, denser crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the bread and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until well done. Baking powder starts gas release as soon as it is wet, so the batter should go into the pans and into the oven without delay. Baking until fully set and well done ensures the structure sets before the loaf sinks.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Pecansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, wheat, 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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