Name: Milk Bread
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon butter; 1 yeast cake, dissolved; 2 tablespoons sugar; warm water (enough to make the required quantity of bread)

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Milk Bread

Ingredients

1 tablespoon butter
1 yeast cake, dissolved
2 tablespoons sugar
warm water (enough to make the required quantity of bread)

Directions

Mix the dissolved yeast cake, butter, and sugar into a sponge with warm water.
Treat the mixture like other bread dough.
After mixing the dough stiff, pound it vigorously for ten minutes.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + breadtop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,638 recipes

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