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Bread

White Bread

A loaf made from boiled potatoes, flour, yeast, lard, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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White Bread

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

White 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil potatoes in 1 pint of water until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes and add flour.

  3. Stir vigorously, then add potato water and enough cold water to make 2 quarts of lukewarm mixture.

  4. Soak yeast in ⅓ cup lukewarm water, then add to the mixture along with lard, salt, and sugar.

  5. Pour into 2 sifters of flour and mix well.

  6. Knead for 10 minutes and place in a greased bowl.

Rise and bake

  1. Cover the top with lard and let rise overnight.

  2. Mold into 5 loaves and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Add moisture and starch that give the bread a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the loaves.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the crust.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Kneading and the overnight rise. Kneading develops the gluten so the dough can trap gas. The long rise lets the yeast leaven it slowly; the dough should be covered so it does not dry out or form a skin.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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