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Unleavened Bread-chips

A simple unleavened dough made from flour, butter, salt, and milk, rolled thin, cut into strips, and baked until crisp.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Unleavened Bread-chips

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, butter, and salt.

  3. Add enough milk and water to form a stiff dough.

  4. Flour a surface and roll the dough thin. Fold the dough twice and roll it out again. Fold and roll it thin once more.

Cut and bake

  1. Cut into strips ¼ inch wide and 4 to 5 inches long.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes or until cooked through and brittle, but not very 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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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 main structure of the dough and sets into crisp, brittle chips when baked.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and gives the chips a richer flavor.
Milk and water
Hydrates the flour so it forms a stiff, workable dough.

The step that matters

Rolling and folding the dough thin. Rolling the dough thin and folding it repeatedly builds layers and keeps the chips thin enough to bake through and turn brittle. Thick dough stays soft in the center and can bake unevenly.

“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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