Name: Modern Cookery
Ingredients: 1 gallon flour; 1 teaspoon salt; 2 to 3 pints skimmed milk; 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

1 gallon flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 to 3 pints skimmed milk
butter for greasing pans

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.

Prepare the dough

Combine flour and salt in a large bowl.
Gradually add skimmed milk until a soft dough forms.
Knead the dough lightly until smooth.
Let the dough rise for 1 to 2 hours until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Grease shallow round earthen pans with butter.
Divide the dough into 3 loaves and place in the pans.
Bake for 1 hour until golden brown.

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).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 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

Flour: Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and body.
Skimmed milk: Supplies the liquid that hydrates the flour and turns it into a soft, workable dough.

“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.