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Bread

Bread

A potato-based bread made by boiling, mashing, and mixing with yeast, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato mixture

  1. Peel the potatoes.

  2. Slice the potatoes.

  3. Boil the potatoes in water until tender.

  4. Mash the potatoes.

  5. Strain the mash through a sifter.

  6. Let the mixture cool.

Make the yeast mixture

  1. Add the dissolved yeast, sugar, and salt.

  2. Set the mixture aside to rise.

  3. Make this mixture fresh each time you make bread.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  2. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that give the bread a soft, moist crumb.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars to produce gas that makes the dough rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a touch of sweetness and browning.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and adds flavor.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by very hot liquid, so the potato mash must be cool enough before the dissolved yeast, sugar, and salt go in. Adding it too hot can stop the rise.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, 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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