Name: Milk Bread
Ingredients: 1 quart milk; ½ teacup yeast; ½ lb butter; 1 tablespoon white sugar; coarse sea salt (to taste); flour (enough to make a stiff dough)

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 ↓

Milk Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

Warm the milk until blood-warm.
Stir in 1 pint of flour, sugar, and yeast.
Beat well and let rise for 5-6 hours.

Make the dough

Melt the butter and add it with a little salt.
Work in enough flour to make a stiff dough.
Let rise for 4 hours, then shape into small loaves.

Bake

Set near the fire for 30 minutes, then bake.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Milk: Provides liquid that hydrates the flour and makes a soft, tender crumb.
Yeast: Ferments the sugars and produces gas that raises the dough.
Butter: Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Flour: Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure.
White sugar: Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.