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Brioche Paste

A brioche dough made with flour, yeast, salt, sugar, butter, eggs, and cream or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Brioche Paste

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Brioche Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the leaven

  1. Sift 2 pounds of flour and set aside 8 ounces for the leaven.

  2. In a small bowl, mix the 8 ounces of flour with yeast and warm water to form a paste.

  3. Make incisions on top, cover with a cloth, and let rise near a warm place for 20 minutes.

Make the dough

  1. Create a hollow in the remaining flour, add salt, sugar, and cream (or water).

  2. Cut butter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture.

  3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until a smooth, workable paste forms.

  4. If needed, add an extra egg or yolk for better consistency.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 holds the dough together as it is worked.
Yeast
Ferments the leaven, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and enriches the dough.
Eggs
Add richness, moisture and structure, helping bind the dough smoothly.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Gluten and emulsion form gradually as eggs are incorporated. Adding them all at once can break the emulsion and leave the dough greasy or slack, so each egg should be fully mixed in before the next.

“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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