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Bread

Milk Bread

Milk Bread is a bread made with milk, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Milk Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sponge

  1. Scald the milk and let it cool.

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour with the rubbed butter to make a sponge.

  3. If making rolls, add sugar to the mixture.

  4. Let the sponge stand until light.

Knead and shape

  1. Add enough flour to knead thoroughly.

  2. Let the dough rise again.

  3. Work it over as before.

  4. Shape the dough as desired.

  5. Keep the dough in an earthen vessel covered with tin to avoid greasing while rising.

  6. Butter the top of the dough before placing it in the pans to rise.

Bake

  1. Do not cover with a cloth while baking.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Milk
Provides liquid and milk solids that add richness and a soft crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown; used when making rolls.

The step that matters

Let the sponge stand until light. The sponge must ferment long enough for yeast to produce gas and build volume. Under-rising leaves a dense loaf, while over-rising can weaken the gluten and collapse the dough.

“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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