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Bread

Milk Bread

A yeast-leavened loaf made with milk, butter or lard, sugar, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the milk

  1. Boil the milk with butter or lard and sugar for 1 minute, then let it cool.

Make the dough

  1. In an earthen dish, combine the flour and stir in the cooled milk.

  2. Beat the mixture hard for 5 to 10 minutes, then add the yeast.

  3. Let the mixture stand in a warm place until it rises.

  4. Once light, stir in enough flour to make a stiff dough and knead for 30 minutes.

  5. Return the dough to the dish and let it rise again until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead again, shape into loaves, and place in bread pans.

  2. Let the loaves rise nearly to the top, then bake for 1 hour.

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.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. 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
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture hard before adding the yeast. Vigorous beating develops gluten early, giving the dough the strength to trap the gas yeast produces and rise well.

“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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