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Brioche Paste

A yeast dough made with flour, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, salt, and yeast, left to rise for up to twelve hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Brioche Paste

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 Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the yeast into the warm milk.

  2. Use the mixture to make a dough with a quarter of the flour.

  3. Let this dough rise in the center of the remaining flour in a warm place.

Enrich and rest

  1. Once risen, place the dough on a board and work the eggs into it until it no longer sticks to your hands.

  2. Incorporate the butter into the dough.

  3. Allow the dough to stand in a warm place for twelve hours, preferably overnight.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gluten network that gives the dough its structure and chew.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich, soft texture.
German yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise.
Eggs
Add moisture, richness, and structure that helps bind the enriched dough.
Milk
Provides moisture and helps hydrate the flour and activate the yeast.

The step that matters

Working the eggs in until the dough no longer sticks. Eggs are added gradually so the gluten can absorb their liquid and fat without the dough becoming slack. Stopping when the dough no longer sticks to the hands shows the gluten has developed enough to hold the enriched dough together.

“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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