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Bread

White Breads

A loaf made from mashed potatoes, flour, yeast, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 Breads

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.

Make the dough

  1. Cook the potatoes and mash them finely.

  2. Save the potato water and add enough lukewarm water to make 8 teacupfuls.

  3. Mix in the salt, sugar, and mashed potatoes.

  4. Add the yeast cake broken into small pieces.

  5. Incorporate flour to form a stiff dough.

  6. Let the dough rise overnight or for 8 to 9 hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the loaves and turn them over in warmed lard in the pans.

  2. Allow them to rise in a warm place for about 1.5 hours or until doubled in size.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 45 minutes.

  4. Remove from pans and grease the tops with lard.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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, keeping the bread soft and tender.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise overnight or for 8 to 9 hours. Long, slow fermentation lets the yeast build flavor and gas. Rising too short leaves the loaves dense; rising too long can weaken the structure.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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