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Bread

Cottage Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, yeast, butter or lard, sugar, salt, and eggs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Cottage Bread

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cottage Bread

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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast in warm water.

  2. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, and salt.

  3. Add melted butter or lard and eggs to the dry ingredients.

  4. Mix until a dough forms and let it rise until doubled in size.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to the size of a plate.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  3. Once cooked, open and spread each piece with butter, then put them together again and slice.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Forms the dough structure that holds the bread together as it rises and bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, helping the dough bind and bake to a firm crumb.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough and the spread.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning to the crust.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until doubled in size. Yeast needs time to ferment and trap gas in the dough. Under-proofed dough bakes dense, while the rise must finish before shaping so the loaf stays light.

“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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