Skip to main content
Bread

Vienna Brioches

Vienna Brioche is a sweet yeast bread made with milk, eggs, butter, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vienna Brioches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk and yeast to make a light sponge.

  2. Once the sponge is ready, mix in the beaten eggs, salt, and sugar.

  3. Gradually add flour and incorporate the butter to form a slack dough.

  4. Let the dough rise and then work it over before placing it in a cold area for 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into desired forms and allow to proof.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 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).

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
Add richness, structure and color to the dough.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the sponge and dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Milk
Provides moisture that hydrates the flour and feeds the yeast.

The step that matters

Incorporating the butter into the slack dough. Cold or rushed butter can stay in lumps rather than blending evenly. Fat coats flour proteins and limits gluten development, so a well-blended dough stays tender. Letting the dough rise and chill before shaping helps it firm up enough to handle.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes