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Milk Yeast, or Salt Rising Bread

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Milk Yeast, or Salt Rising Bread

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, combine wheat midlings, sugar, ginger, salt, and baking soda.

  2. Store the mixture in a tight container.

  3. The day before baking, take 2 tablespoons of the dry mixture, add it to a cup, and pour boiling water over it to make a thick paste.

  4. Set the mixture in a warm place until it becomes light by evening.

  5. The next morning, mix 1 cup of new milk and 1 cup of boiling water with a little salt.

  6. Stir in flour until the mixture is thick like fritter batter.

  7. Add the yeast mixture from the day before (it may be dark but will not affect the bread's color).

  8. Place the mixture in a kettle of hot water and let it rise for 2-3 hours until foaming.

  9. Mix the bread dough, place it in pans, and let it rise until light before 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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together255 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wheat, sugar, milk, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Gingerthe original

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

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