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Bread

Potato and Rice Bread

A yeast bread made with rice flour, mashed sweet potatoes, butter, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 137 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Potato and Rice Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Mix the dough

  1. Dissolve the butter in the milk.

  2. Add the yeast, salt, and mashed sweet potatoes, and mix well.

  3. Stir in the rice flour until combined.

Rise and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a greased pan and let it rise overnight.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until light and cooked through.

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. Sweet potato + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and turn light.
Rice flour
Forms the bulk of the loaf and sets into its crumb as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness and helps the crust brown.
Butter
Adds fat that softens the crumb and gives a richer flavour.
Mashed sweet potatoes
Adds moisture, body and a gentle natural sweetness.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise overnight. Yeast needs time to produce gas and build structure in the batter. If the dough is under-risen, the loaf stays dense and heavy after baking, so the rise should be given its full time in the greased pan.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, rice, flour. 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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