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Bread

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Test the yeast by dissolving it in a cup of lukewarm water or milk with salt and sugar. If it rises in 10-15 minutes, it's ready to use.

  2. Sift the flour and set a sponge with warm milk or water. Keep it in a warm place until very light.

  3. Mold the sponge into a large ball by adding flour and knead well for 30 minutes.

  4. Let the dough rise again until it is sufficiently light, then shape it into small loaves or one large loaf.

  5. Ensure the dough is soft and not too stiff with flour.

  6. Before baking, wet the top with water. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for about an hour for large loaves.

  7. After baking, wrap the bread in a clean towel dampened with warm water and lean it against something to keep the crust soft.

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. Flour + sugartop 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

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