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Bread

Brioche

A yeasted sweet bread made with butter, milk, eggs, and flour, baked until golden.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast in a little warm water to prepare a sponge.

  2. Mix the sponge with enough flour to form a batter and let it rise until doubled in size.

Make and rise the dough

  1. On a floured surface, make a well in 1 pound of flour and add the butter, milk, eggs, salt, and the risen sponge.

  2. Work the mixture together, adding flour as needed.

  3. Cover and let it rise in a warm place for 3 hours.

  4. Roll out the dough and fold it three times.

Shape and bake

  1. Remove about a quarter of the dough, shape the remainder into a round, slightly flattened top.

  2. Shape the smaller piece into a ball, flatten it, and place it on top of the larger piece.

  3. Glaze with beaten egg, place on a buttered baking tin, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 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 and traps the gas produced by the yeast.
Fresh butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour to the dough.
Milk
Adds moisture to the dough, softening the crumb.
German yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully. The rise depends on live yeast activity in a warm place. If the dough is cold or underproofed, it will stay dense, and overproofing can make it collapse and lose structure.

“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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