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 ↓
Family Bread.— Mrs. Israel Knox
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 dough
In a bowl, combine sweet milk, yeast, and sugar.
Stir in flour until the dough is stiff and does not run from a spoon.
Set the dough in a warm room to rise overnight.
Shape and bake
On a floured surface, mold the dough into loaves about 2 inches thick and place in pans.
Let the loaves rise again.
Prick the loaves with a fork before baking.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
Once baked, roll the loaves in a bread cloth until cool.
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).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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
What each ingredient does
- Yeast
- Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten structure that holds the loaves together.
- Sweet milk
- Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and dissolves the yeast.
- White sugar
- Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.
The step that matters
Stir in flour until the dough is stiff. The dough must be firm enough to hold its shape. Too much liquid leaves it slack, so it spreads and bakes flat and dense instead of rising into a well-shaped loaf.
“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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