Name: Yankee Biscuit
Ingredients: 5 medium potatoes, mashed smooth; 1 cup sugar; 1 cup yeast; 1 quart all-purpose flour; 1 cup yeast; 2 tablespoons lard (size of a walnut); ¼ teaspoon salt; very cold water (as needed)

Why it works: Potato and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 342 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Yankee Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

In a bowl, combine the mashed potatoes, sugar, and yeast to make the yeast mixture.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour, yeast, lard, and salt.
Knead the mixture with very cold water until it forms a stiff dough.
Roll out the dough and cut it with a biscuit cutter.
Let the biscuits rise for about 2 hours before baking.

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.

Potato + walnuttop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together342 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,873 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + walnuttop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,147 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).