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 ↓
Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Make the batter
Make a thin batter with flour and 3 cups of water.
Add the yeast softened in warm water.
When it is light, mix in the salt, butter, milk, and remaining 3 cups of water.
Rise and shape
Add enough flour to make a very stiff dough.
Let it rise overnight.
In the morning, add more flour, knead thoroughly, and shape into loaves.
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 + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 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
- Yeast
- Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
- Flour
- Forms gluten, the network that gives the dough its structure.
- Milk
- Adds richness and softness, and helps the crust brown.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
The step that matters
Add the yeast when the batter is light. Yeast needs an active, bubbly batter to work well. Adding it at the right point helps the dough rise evenly, while a batter that has not yet risen or has collapsed will give a weaker rise.
“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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