Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Potato Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the starter
Mash the boiled potatoes and mix with the flour.
In a large container, combine 15 quarts of cool water with 3 pints of hop yeast, cover tightly, and let sit for 12 hours.
Strain off the top until you have 5 quarts of liquid remaining.
Add the liquid to the mashed potatoes and keep in a cool place, covered tightly until needed.
Make the dough
To the 5 quarts of liquid left in the dish, add 5 quarts of water to set a sponge.
To this sponge, add 8 quarts of water, ½ pound of salt, and ½ pound of butter or lard, mixing well.
Add flour until the mixture is stiff to make bread or biscuits.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 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
- Boiled potatoes
- Add moisture and starch that give the bread a soft, tender crumb.
- Hop yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure once it is stiff.
- Butter or lard
- Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture of the bread.
The step that matters
Strain off the top until you have 5 quarts of liquid remaining. The liquid left after the long fermentation carries the yeast's activity into the sponge. Removing too much or too little changes the amount of yeast and liquid in the dough, which affects how well it rises and how the bread's texture develops.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):
- Shallotfits better
- Leekfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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