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Dessert

Pate De Brioches

A rich yeast dough made with flour, eggs, butter, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pate De Brioches

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 pound of flour with the yeast and enough lukewarm water to form a paste.

  2. Cover the bowl with a cloth.

  3. Let the paste rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, make a hole in the remaining flour.

  2. Add the eggs to the hole.

  3. Add the butter to the mixture.

  4. Add the salt to the mixture.

  5. Uncover the risen paste.

  6. Cut the paste into pieces.

  7. Mix the pieces with some water to form a stiff paste.

  8. Knead the paste well.

  9. Place the kneaded paste in a floured bowl.

  10. Cover the floured bowl.

  11. Let the dough rise for 10 to 12 hours in a warm place, wrapped in a cloth.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into pieces the size of a turkey egg.

  2. Shape each piece into a round.

  3. Place the rounds on a baking sheet.

  4. Brush the tops with egg.

  5. Bake in a gentle oven until golden.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it rises and bakes.
Leaven or yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy crumb.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich flavour.

The step that matters

Knead the paste well. Kneading develops gluten, the flour's stretchy network that traps gas from the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense.

“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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