Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Excellent Dairy-bread Made Without Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the dry mix
Blend a teaspoonful of pounded sugar with fifty grains of pure carbonate of soda; mix a saltspoonful of salt with a pound of flour, and rub the soda and sugar through a hair-sieve into the flour.
Make and bake the loaf
Stir and mingle the mixture well, and knead quickly into a firm but not hard dough with sour buttermilk.
Keep the buttermilk until it is quite acid, but never rancid.
Place the loaf in the oven immediately after it is made, or it will be heavy.
Bake the loaf well in a thoroughly heated, but not fierce oven; bake for a few minutes less than an hour in a brick or good iron oven.
Scale up
For larger baking, use rather less than an ounce of soda per gallon of flour (seven pounds).
Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1 cup (125g) all-purpose | 455 |
| Sugar | 1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated | 49 |
| Salt | 1 tsp (6g) | 0 |
One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.
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. See the original page.
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.
-
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the loaf once kneaded into dough.
- Carbonate of soda
- Reacts with the acid in the buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the loaf.
- Sour buttermilk (in the method)
- Its acidity activates the soda and adds tang and moisture to the dough.
The step that matters
Get the loaf into the oven immediately after shaping. Soda begins reacting with the acid as soon as the dough is mixed, so gas is released quickly. Delay lets that lift escape before the crumb sets, leaving a heavy loaf.
“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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