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Potato Buns

A sweet yeast bread made from mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, and molasses glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Buns

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato cakes

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash and sift them through a sieve.

  2. Add 1½ pints of flour, 2 tablespoons of baking powder, and 1 pint of milk or cream to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  4. Bake the cakes in a greased tin for 20 minutes.

Make the biscuit dough

  1. Break 1 egg and fill it with milk.

  2. Mix the egg mixture with ½ cup yeast, ½ cup butter, and 1 cup sugar.

  3. Add enough flour to make a soft dough.

  4. Flavor the dough with nutmeg.

  5. Let the dough rise until very light.

Shape and bake

  1. Mold the dough into biscuits and add a few currants.

  2. Let the biscuits rise a second time.

  3. Bake the biscuits.

  4. Glaze with a mixture of molasses and milk when nearly done.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Builds the dough's structure so it holds its shape after baking.
Potatoes
Add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the bread.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping it rise and lighten.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and gives a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches the flavor.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure and richness.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and stretch the dough's structure. Underproofed dough stays dense, while overproofed dough can collapse or lose its shape in the oven.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg. 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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