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A Large Brioche

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Large Brioche

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.

  1. Turn out the brioche paste onto a clean surface and dust with flour.

  2. Fold the paste over six times, kneading it down with your knuckles each time.

  3. Place the paste back in the bowl and let it rest for about 2 hours.

  4. Knead two-thirds of the paste into a round ball and place it in a tin hoop on a baking plate.

  5. Knead the remaining paste into another ball and attach it to the center of the first ball using water or egg.

  6. Brush the top with egg, score the sides with a knife, and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C).

  7. Once the brioche begins to rise and turns light golden, cover it with paper and continue baking for about 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Brioche + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Brioche + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

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