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Dessert

Brioche, Another Way

A rich yeast dough made with flour, butter, milk, sugar, salt, eggs, and yeast, baked in buttered molds.

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 ↓

Brioche, Another Way

Ingredients

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.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, make a well in 4 pounds of flour.

  2. Dissolve 3½ pounds of butter in a small amount of warm milk, then add a little sugar and salt.

  3. Pour the butter mixture into the well in the flour and mix well.

  4. Add 2 ounces of yeast and 28 eggs, then mix until combined.

  5. Cover the mixture with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Once risen, knead the dough well and place it into buttered copper molds, filling them halfway.

  2. Let the molds sit in a warm place until the dough rises to the top of the molds.

  3. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C) and bake the brioche 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

White fine flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and traps gas as it rises.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, softening the crumb and giving brioche its flavour.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture, helping the dough set and bake to a tender crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps dissolve the butter and sugar into the dough.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light, airy crumb. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the rise and fermentation build the flavour and texture of the brioche.

“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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