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Bread

Vienna Bread

Vienna Bread is a yeast roll made with flour, yeast, sugar, salt, egg, butter, and warm milk, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Vienna Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix the sugar and yeast together.

  2. Beat the egg and add it to the warm milk.

  3. Pour the egg and milk mixture into the yeast mixture.

  4. In a bowl, combine the flour, salt, and butter.

  5. Pour the dissolved yeast into the dry ingredients.

  6. Mix the dough well.

Rise and shape

  1. Let the dough rise for about 2 hours.

  2. Shape the dough into rolls.

  3. Let the rolls prove.

Bake

  1. Bake the rolls in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Its proteins form gluten, giving the dough structure and chew.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas, which makes the dough rise and become light.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, and helps the dough hold together.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the crumb and gives a tender texture.
Milk
Provides moisture and softness, and its sugars help the crust brown.
Castor sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise and prove fully. Yeast produces gas slowly, so the dough needs enough time to expand before baking. Underproved rolls stay dense, while overproved dough can collapse or lose structure.

“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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