Name: Modern Cookery
Ingredients: 1 gallon all-purpose flour; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 pints skimmed milk; additional milk (1 to 2 pints); cream (optional); sweet buttermilk (optional); butter (for greasing pans)

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 ↓

Modern Cookery

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 large bowl, combine the flour and salt.
Gradually add the skimmed milk and mix until a dough forms.
Knead the dough lightly until it is smooth.
Let the dough rise for 1 hour until it has doubled in size.

Shape and bake

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Divide the dough into 3 loaves and place them in shallow round earthen pans greased with butter.
Let the loaves rise for another hour.
Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.
For a richer flavor, consider adding cream or sweet buttermilk.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,721 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together674 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour: Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
Skimmed milk: Hydrates the flour so the dough forms and becomes elastic.
Salt: Controls yeast-free dough texture and adds flavor to the bread.

“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.