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Bread

French Bread

A yeast bread made with flour, butter, milk, beer yeast, and egg, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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French Bread

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 ↓

French Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Mix in the lukewarm milk, beer yeast, and beaten egg.

  3. Knead the mixture and set it to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into 2 cakes and place them on buttered tins.

  2. Let them rise for 1.5 hours in a warm place.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + beertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Flour
Provides the structure that the dough's gluten network builds to hold the bread's shape.
Beer yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas during fermentation, which makes the dough rise and become airy.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives the bread a richer flavour.
Milk
Adds moisture to hydrate the flour and supplies milk sugars that aid gentle browning.
Egg
Adds protein and fat that enrich the dough and help give a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise fully before baking. Yeast needs time in a warm place to produce enough gas. Rising too little leaves a dense loaf, while the second rise sets the final texture before the oven.

“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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