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 ↓
Milk Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Dissolve the yeast in ½ cup of cold water.
Heat the milk to about 80°F (27°C).
Add the salt and dissolved yeast to the milk.
Mix in enough flour to make a soft dough and beat well.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead until soft and velvety.
Place the dough in a buttered bowl, brush the top with melted fat, cover, and let rise for 5 hours or until doubled in size.
Shape the dough into loaves, butter the top, and let rise for 1 hour.
Bake in a preheated oven.
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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