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 ↓
Baker's Milk Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the sponge and dough as you would for common bread, using sweet milk instead of water.
Beat the sponge and dough very well, gradually adding the flour.
Keep the dough as soft as possible for kneading, but not so soft that it loses shape.
Bake the loaves in tin molds after the rolls come out of the oven.
Use a slack oven to bake, as the bread should be light in color and can brown too easily.
Brush the loaves with milk when done.
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 + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
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