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Potato Biscuit

A baked biscuit made from mashed potatoes, butter, egg, sweet milk, yeast, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Biscuit

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Biscuit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes with their skins on, then drain and squeeze them dry with a towel.

  2. Remove the skins and mash the potatoes until smooth.

  3. Add the butter, egg, and sweet milk to the mashed potatoes.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Once cool, mix in the yeast and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  2. Let the dough rise, then shape it into small cakes.

Bake

  1. Allow the cakes to rise again before baking until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk and starchy body that gives the dough its soft, tender crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas during fermentation, making the dough rise before and after shaping.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the stiff dough enough structure to hold its shape.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the mashed potato mixture together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the finished cakes.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and helps the dough become soft and workable.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise before shaping and again before baking. Yeast needs time to ferment and trap gas in the dough; rising too briefly leaves the cakes dense, while the second rise lets them puff up in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, milk, 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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