Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Salt-rising Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Stir the cornmeal into the scalding milk at night and place it in a tin cup in a warm place.
In the morning, mix warm water with a pinch of baking soda and enough flour to create a batter that drops off a knife.
Stir in the cornmeal mixture from the night before and beat well.
Set the batter in a kettle of warm water and maintain an even temperature for about 2 hours until light.
Add 1 pint of warm water, salt, and enough flour to form loaves.
Knead until smooth, place in bread pans, and let rise in a warm place before baking.
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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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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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