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Bread

Milk Sponge Bread

Milk Sponge Bread is a loaf made by mixing boiling water, sugar, salt, baking soda, flour, and warm milk into a light batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk 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 ↓

Milk Sponge Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Combine boiling water, sugar, salt, and baking soda in a pitcher.

  2. Let the mixture cool until you can bear your finger in it.

  3. Add flour to create a thick batter.

  4. Beat the batter hard for 2 minutes.

  5. Place the pitcher in a kettle of hot water, ensuring it doesn't scald.

  6. Maintain the water temperature until the mixture is light.

  7. If prepared in the morning, it will be ready by 11 o'clock.

  8. Add 1 quart of very warm milk to the light mixture to make a sponge.

  9. Let the sponge rise until very light.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the sponge into loaves.

  2. Let the loaves rise again, being careful not to over-proof.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C).

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk 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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the thick batter and gives the bread its structure as it sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the mixture to add lift and help the sponge rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the sponge and softens the crumb.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast-driven rise and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the loaves rise again without over-proofing. If the dough rises too long, its gluten structure weakens and the air cells collapse, so the loaves can sink or bake up coarse and flat.

“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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