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Bread

Milk Yeast Bread

A yeast bread made with milk, boiling water, sugar, salt, flour, and baking soda, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Milk Yeast Bread

Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Milk Yeast Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Combine milk, boiling water, sugar, salt, and 3 pints of flour in a 2.5-quart pail. Mix well and cover tightly.

  2. Place the pail into another container filled with water, using half boiling and half cold water to maintain temperature.

  3. Let the mixture rise for about 5 hours, beating it every half hour until the last hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Once risen, place 2 quarts of flour in a pan and make a well in the center.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and pour it into the well along with the risen batter.

  3. Knead the mixture well and shape it into loaves.

  4. Let the loaves rise in a warm place for 45 minutes.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Builds the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.
Milk
Adds moisture, softness, and browning from its milk sugars and proteins.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to release gas, helping the loaves rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Keeping the rise temperature steady. Yeast activity depends on temperature. Water that is too hot can kill yeast, while cold slows fermentation, so the batter may not rise as expected. Maintaining a steady warm temperature gives the dough enough time to develop gas and structure.

“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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