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Dessert

Bread Sticks

Bread sticks are small, elongated rolls made from a yeast dough with milk, butter, sugar, salt, and egg, baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Bread Sticks

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, and salt to the milk when it is lukewarm.

  3. Dissolve the yeast cake in lukewarm water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg and enough flour to form a dough.

  5. Knead the dough and let it rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Shape the dough into sticks and place them on a baking sheet.

  3. Bake until crisp and dry, reducing the heat if necessary.

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. Butter + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Adds moisture and richness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Butter
Adds fat, which tenderizes the dough and adds flavor.
Yeast cake
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become airy.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.

The step that matters

Bake until crisp and dry, reducing the heat if necessary. Breadsticks dry out and crisp as moisture evaporates in the oven. If the heat is too high, the outside can brown or burn before the inside dries, so watching the heat matters.

“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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