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Bread

Bread

A bread made with hops, potatoes, flour, yeast, salt, and Indian meal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquor

  1. Boil 1 handful of hops in a bag with 1 quart of water.

  2. Squeeze the bag of hops and return the pulp to the water.

  3. Stir the mixture and bring it to a boil.

Make the potato batter

  1. Peel and add 6 large potatoes to the boiling water until soft.

  2. Pass the potatoes through a colander, moistening with some hot water.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over sufficient flour to make a thin batter.

  4. When tepid, add ½ pint of yeast and mix well.

Rest

  1. Place in a crock with a lid in a cool place for use in the evening if made in the morning.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed into the batter, they add body, moisture and starch that feeds the yeast.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so the bread rises and gains its airy texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the batter, setting as it cooks and dries.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and their natural preservative character helps the batter keep.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when tepid. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before adding it. If it is still hot, the yeast will not ferment and the bread will not rise.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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