Name: Salt Rising or Milk Yeast Bread
Ingredients: ½ pint boiling water; 2 tablespoons cornmeal; a pinch of salt; 2 tablespoons flour; ½ pint fresh sweet milk or warm water; flour (enough to make the yeast smooth); 2 quarts milk (scalded and cooled); flour (enough to make a batter)

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salt Rising or Milk Yeast Bread

Ingredients

½ pint boiling water
2 tablespoons cornmeal
a pinch of salt
2 tablespoons flour
½ pint fresh sweet milk or warm water
flour (enough to make the yeast smooth)
2 quarts milk (scalded and cooled)
flour (enough to make a batter)

Directions

Pour boiling water over cornmeal and salt. Let it stand for 10 minutes.
Stir in flour and set in a warm place to rise overnight.
In the morning, add fresh milk or warm water and enough flour to make the yeast smooth.
Place the mixture in a kettle of warm water, maintaining the temperature.
When it rises, pour it into a batter made of scalded milk and enough flour to make a batter.
Beat well and set to rise again in a warm place for 25-30 minutes.

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 + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cornbread345 recipes

Bread Pudding336 recipes

Milk Bread Rolls242 recipes

Potato Bread124 recipes

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Salt Rising or Milk Yeast Bread