Name: To Make Potatoe Bread
Ingredients: 1 peck potatoes (about 8 medium potatoes); 2 pecks wheat flour (about 16 cups); Yeast (amount as needed); Coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

To Make Potatoe Bread

Ingredients

1 peck potatoes (about 8 medium potatoes)
2 pecks wheat flour (about 16 cups)
Yeast (amount as needed)
Coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt')

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

Peel the potatoes and place them in a pot of water.
Boil the potatoes until they are soft and can be mashed into a pulp.
Mash the potatoes in the water they were boiled in until smooth.

Make and bake the bread

In a large bowl, combine the potato pulp with the wheat flour, yeast, and salt to form a dough.
Cover the dough and let it ferment for at least 2 hours, or longer depending on the weather.
Shape the dough into loaves and bake 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.

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 + wheattop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Wheat flour: Forms the main structure of the dough through gluten that traps gas and holds the loaves.
Potatoes: Add moisture and starch that keep the crumb soft and help the bread stay fresh.
Yeast: Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and gives the bread its airy texture.
Coarse sea salt: Controls yeast activity and strengthens the dough while adding flavor.

The step that matters

Letting the dough ferment. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to raise the dough, and fermentation speed depends on temperature, so the dough can under-rise in cool weather. Checking that it has visibly grown before shaping helps the loaves rise properly in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

Arrowrootfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Kalefits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, 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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Barley Wheat Bread6 recipes

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To Make Potatoe Bread