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Chicago Vienna Bread

A yeast bread made with salt, sugar, lard, and sweet milk, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and milk 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 ↓

Chicago Vienna 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.

Make the dough

  1. Prepare a sponge by mixing 3 oz. of compressed yeast with water in a 2-bucket container.

  2. When the sponge begins to bubble, add 2 buckets of sweet milk, 1 lb. of coarse sea salt, ½ lb. of sugar, and ½ lb. of lard.

  3. Allow the dough to rise, then fold the dough over.

  4. When it rises a second time, divide it into portions.

Shape and rise

  1. Shape the portions into loaves.

  2. Place the loaves in cloths.

  3. Let the loaves rise again.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. If there is no steam attachment, place a pan of water in the oven.

  3. Keep the oven door closed until the bread is fully baked.

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. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and milk 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

What each ingredient does

Compressed yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy crumb.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the crumb and aiding browning.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer texture.

The step that matters

Let the sponge bubble before adding the salt and other ingredients. Salt slows yeast activity, so adding it too early can weaken the rise. Waiting until the sponge is active gives the yeast a strong start before the rest of the dough is added.

“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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