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Brioche, or Butter Rusks

A yeasted bread made with butter, sugar, milk, and egg yolks, shaped into rolls and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Brioche, or Butter Rusks

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the butter, sugar, and cream with the dough in a pan and mix thoroughly.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks, two at a time, gradually adding most of the flour to form a smooth, yellow dough.

  3. Knead the dough thoroughly and set it aside to rise for about three hours.

  4. Knead the dough a second time, then an hour later knead it once more.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough as directed for French rolls, notching the edges with a knife.

  2. Let the rolls rise and bake them as you would regular rolls.

  3. Brush the rolls with butter when 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.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, giving the bread its soft, fine crumb.
Egg yolks
Add fat and emulsifiers that enrich the dough and give it a golden color and tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crust brown during baking.
Flour
Provides the gluten structure that holds the dough together and lets it rise.
Milk or cream
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and softens the crumb.

The step that matters

Kneading and rising the dough. Thorough kneading develops gluten so the rich, heavy dough can trap gas. Rising for the full time lets yeast build the airy, tender structure brioche needs.

“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.

More brioche recipes

Dough 14Cakes 4Cake 3Fritters 3Rolls 3Cheese 3 See all 27 →

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