Name: Cinnamon Bread
Ingredients: 1 pint bread dough; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 egg yolks; 1 tablespoon butter; 3 tablespoons milk; flour; melted butter; 1 cup brown sugar; ground cinnamon

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cinnamon Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

In the morning, take 1 pint of bread dough.
Add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 egg yolks, 1 tablespoon of butter, and 3 tablespoons of milk.
Add enough flour to form a dough and let it rise until doubled in size.
Roll out the dough and place it in a buttered tin.
Spread with melted butter and sprinkle with 1 cup of brown sugar and ground cinnamon.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,655 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together30,779 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, sugar, egg, butter, milk, flour):

Cinnamonthe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Capersfits less well
Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, egg, butter, milk, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.