Name: Salt-rising Bread
Ingredients: 1 teacup milk; boiling water (enough to bring milk to blood temperature); ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon sugar; 1 large tablespoon Indian cornmeal or graham flour; 2 teaspoons wheat flour

Why it works: Milk and wheat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Salt-rising Bread

Ingredients

1 teacup milk
boiling water (enough to bring milk to blood temperature)
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt
¼ teaspoon sugar
1 large tablespoon Indian cornmeal or graham flour
2 teaspoons wheat flour

Directions

Make the batter

Pour boiling water into the milk to reach blood temperature (about 90°F).
Add the salt and sugar, then stir in the cornmeal and wheat flour.
Mix until the batter is the consistency of pancake batter.
Place the bowl in warm water to rise.
If water gathers on top, dust with a little flour and stir.

Rise and bake

Set the dough in the morning; it will rise by noon.
Mix as you would other bread.
Place the dough in an earthenware dish.
Let stand until light.
Bake when ready.

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.

Milk + wheattop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,418 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Flour + wheattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Milk: Provides moisture and softness to the batter and dough.
Wheat flour: Builds the structure of the bread through its gluten and starch.
Cornmeal: Adds coarse texture and body to the batter.
Sugar: Adds a little sweetness and food for the fermenting batter.

The step that matters

Bringing the milk to blood temperature. The boiling water must be added to the milk slowly and checked so the mixture is about 90°F. Water much hotter kills the living culture that makes the bread rise, while cooler liquid slows fermentation and leads to a flat loaf.

“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.