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 Making
Ingredients
Directions
Measure and sift the flour. Warm the flour and sponge if the weather is cold.
Scald a large tin dish pan. Add the flour and salt, mixing well without making the dough too stiff.
Knead the dough until it no longer sticks to your hands or the board, about 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Form the dough into a large loaf and place it in a floured bread pan.
Cover the loaf with flour or grease it with salted butter or lard. Let it rise in a warm place for 1 to 2 hours until doubled in size.
Knead the dough down in the pan, then form into loaves and place in greased baking pans.
Grease the tops of the loaves with salted butter or lard and let them rise for 15 minutes to 1 hour.
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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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 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
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