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Bread

Bread, Cornbread, Muffins

A quick bread made with flour, salt, baking powder, shortening, and milk.

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

Bread, Cornbread, Muffins

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, and baking powder.

Make the dough

  1. Add the shortening and gradually mix in the milk until just moistened.

  2. Brush the top with milk.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20 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.

  1. 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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the bread together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, lifting the bread so it rises in the oven.
Shortening
Adds fat that coats flour particles, giving the bread a tender, crumbly texture.
Milk
Moistens the flour to form a dough and adds moisture that helps browning on top.

The step that matters

Mixing in the milk until just moistened. Stirring too long develops gluten in the flour, which makes the bread tough and dense. Stop as soon as no dry flour remains so the texture stays tender.

“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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