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Table Bread

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Table Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, and sugar.

  2. Mix the yeast with the lukewarm water until dissolved.

  3. Pour the yeast mixture into the center of the flour while stirring with a wooden spoon until a dough forms.

  4. Knead the dough for 30 minutes, adding more flour or water as needed.

  5. Let the dough rise in a warm place for 4 hours or until it doubles in size.

  6. Knead the dough again with a little flour, shape it into loaves, and place in well-oiled warm pans.

  7. Allow the loaves to rise again until sufficiently raised.

  8. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake the loaves for 1 hour, adding heat after 15 minutes.

  9. Once baked, remove from pans and brush with water or milk.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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

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