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Bread

A loaf of bread made with flour, salt, yeast, cold water, lard or butter, and optional currants and sugar.

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 ↓

Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a jar or tub, combine 10 lb. of flour and 3 handfuls of coarse sea salt.

  2. Stir in nearly 2 cups of yeast and mix with cold water to achieve a thick dough.

  3. Place the jar on the kitchen hearth at 10 PM.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead in an additional 10 lb. of flour the next morning at 5 AM.

  2. Knead a piece of lard or butter into each loaf or pound of dough.

  3. Shape into rolls if desired, adding currants and dusting with sugar.

  4. Let the loaves rise before baking.

  5. Bake in a moderate oven.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

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
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast
Ferments sugars in the dough, producing gas that makes the bread rise.
Lard or butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Coarse sea salt
Controls yeast activity and strengthens gluten, adding flavor.

The step that matters

Let the loaves rise before baking. Yeast needs time to ferment and produce gas; under-proofed loaves stay dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse in the oven.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, sugar):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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