Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Home Made Milk Bread
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Dissolve the yeast in 1 pint of warm water and add flour to make a soft batter.
Beat the batter well and let it stand in a warm place for 20 minutes.
Add the remaining liquids at the right temperature, then add sugar, lard, cornmeal, and salt to form a medium dough.
Let the dough rise fully, then work it down and allow a short rise.
Scale and mold the dough, place it in pans, and let it proof for 45 minutes.
Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).
Work the dough well as the cornmeal makes it sticky.
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.
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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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