Why it works: Bread and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Christmas Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a big log of wood called the 'Yeel Carlin' and place it on the fire between 8 and 9 PM on Christmas Eve.
Mix the bread flour with water, yeast, and salt in a baking trough.
Sign the dough with the sign of the cross before shaping.
Cut the dough into four pieces and place each piece separately on the girdle.
Bake until golden brown, ensuring not to lift the quarters to check the underside.
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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Bread + flourtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,383 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Bread and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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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