Name: Brioche
Ingredients: 16 ounces flour; 8 to 12 ounces butter; 4 to 8 eggs; ¾ ounce sugar; 1 tablespoon fresh yeast; ¼ ounce coarse sea salt; ½ cup milk or cream; 4 to 10 ounces raisins (optional); ⅓ tablespoon saffron (optional)

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brioche

Ingredients

Directions

Mix 4 ounces of flour, ½ ounce of fresh yeast, and 2½ ounces of warm water to form a soft paste. Cover and let it rise until doubled in size.
On a clean surface, place the remaining 12 ounces of flour and make a well in the center. Add butter, salt, milk or cream, and eggs.
Gradually mix in the flour to form a paste. Knead well, incorporating the risen leaven without overworking.
Cover the paste with a cloth in a bowl and let it rise in a warm place for 12 hours.
If the paste is too soft, add more flour; if too firm, add more eggs. It should be slightly finer than bread dough.
Press out the dough and fold it 5 or 6 times, then let it rest for another 3 to 4 hours covered with a cloth.
Before placing the dough in molds, mix in raisins and saffron if desired.

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.

Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,075 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Raisin + saffrontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + saffrontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together447 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

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, sugar, milk, saffron):

Vanillafits about as well
Raisinthe original
Lemonfits less well
Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, sugar, milk, saffron. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.