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White Flour and Irish Potatoes

A yeast roll made with white flour, mashed Irish potatoes, and a few basic seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

White Flour and Irish Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine the flour, fat, mashed potatoes, salt, sugar, and yeast.

  2. Add warm water gradually to form a stiff dough.

  3. Knead the dough, incorporating the potatoes by spoonfuls.

  4. Let the dough rise until light and fluffy.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rolls.

  2. Grease the rolls to keep them soft.

  3. Allow the rolls to rise until they feel light as feathers.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

  1. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

White flour
Gluten proteins form the stretchy network that holds the dough and traps gas.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the bread.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas, which makes the rolls rise and turn light.
Fat
Tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture of the rolls.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the rolls brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the rolls rise until light. Yeast gas must fill the dough before baking. Underproofed rolls stay dense and heavy, while overproofed rolls can collapse or turn flat in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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

“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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