Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Bread and Milk
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the bread
Cut the crust from the bread slice.
Pour boiling water over the bread, pressing slightly, then pour off the water. Repeat this process three times.
Beat the softened bread with a silver fork until fine.
Make the bread milk
In an earthen or porcelain saucepan, combine the bread with the milk and a little sugar.
Stir gently and heat until it boils for a few minutes.
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.
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Bread + milktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together11,466 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + sugartop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,638 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
- Home-made bread
- Provides the body of the dish, softened by water and then thickened with milk.
- Milk
- Adds moisture and creaminess, forming the liquid base that the softened bread is heated in.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness to balance the plain bread and milk.
The step that matters
Beating the softened bread until fine. If the bread is not beaten smooth, lumps of soft crumb stay in the finished dish and it will have an uneven texture rather than a uniform, creamy one.
“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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