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 ↓
Genuine Vienna Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a sponge with 2½ cups of lukewarm milk and 2½ oz. of yeast.
Once the sponge is ready, add 2½ cups of milk, 4 oz. of coarse sea salt, ¼ lb. of sugar, and ½ lb. of lard.
Work the mixture into a medium dough.
Cut the dough into round loaves and let them rise covered on the bench.
Roll the loaves into long shapes and place them in cloths.
Allow them to proof well and then bake on the hearth.
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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