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Bread

A simple yeast bread made with flour, sugar, water, and butter or lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

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.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in a little of the lukewarm water.

  2. Mix in all the ingredients and let sit overnight in a sheltered corner, covered with a cloth.

  3. The next morning, knead the dough for 15 minutes, adding just enough flour to prevent sticking.

Shape and rise

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and place in greased pans, filling them no more than halfway.

  2. Cover and let rise in a sheltered corner for 1 to 2 hours, until doubled in size.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes, turning the loaves to brown all sides evenly.

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. Milk + buttertop 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. Sugar + buttertop 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the loaves their structure and chew.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.
Warm water
Hydrates the flour, forming dough and activating the yeast.
Butter or lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Letting the loaves rise until doubled. Rising is driven by yeast gas, and the dough needs enough time to double. Underproofed loaves stay dense, while overproofed dough can collapse or bake up coarse.

“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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