Skip to main content
Main

Potato Biscuit

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Biscuit

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 Biscuit

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the sponge

  1. Pare, boil, and mash the potatoes thoroughly.

  2. Add lukewarm milk, sugar, yeast, and enough flour to make a thin batter. Mix well.

  3. Let it rise.

Make the dough

  1. Add melted butter, a little salt, and enough flour to make a soft dough.

  2. Let it rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough into a sheet about 1 inch thick and cut into cakes.

  2. Set the cakes to rise again.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Potatoes
Add moisture and starch, giving the dough a soft, tender crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the risen dough and cakes together.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and enriches flavor and browning.
Milk
Provides liquid to hydrate the flour and support yeast activity, plus some browning sugars.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise twice. Yeast needs enough time and warmth to produce gas; rising too short leaves the cakes dense, while over-rising can collapse the structure before baking.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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.

More potato biscuit recipes

Sweet 5 See all 29 →

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes