Name: Plain White Family Bread
Ingredients: 1 pint flour; ½ pint good hop yeast; ½ gallon flour (for later); 1 piece of lard (size of a walnut); 2 teaspoons coarse sea salt (to taste); tepid water (as needed)

Why it works: Flour and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,873 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain White Family Bread

Ingredients

1 pint flour
½ pint good hop yeast
½ gallon flour (for later)
1 piece of lard (size of a walnut)
2 teaspoons coarse sea salt (to taste)
tepid water (as needed)

Directions

Make the sponge

In the afternoon, mix 1 pint of flour with ½ pint of hop yeast.
At night, place ½ gallon of flour in a tray and make a well in the center.
Add the yeast mixture and a piece of lard to the well.
Knead the mixture with tepid salted water until well combined.
Place the dough in a jar to rise overnight.

Shape and bake

The next morning, knead the dough again with a little flour.
Divide the dough into two loaves and let them rise in a warm place.
Bake the loaves until done, then wrap them in a coarse towel.

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.

Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the gluten network and bulk that gives the loaves their structure.
Hop yeast: Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives it an airy crumb.
Lard: Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sea salt: Controls yeast activity and strengthens gluten for flavor and structure.

The step that matters

Overnight rise in the jar. The dough must rise long enough for yeast to produce gas and develop flavor, but not so long that it over-ferments and collapses. Keeping the dough at a steady temperature helps control this balance.

“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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Plain White Family Bread