Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓
Bread
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the sponge
Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash and strain through a colander.
In a large bowl, combine the mashed potatoes with 1 quart of water, ½ cup of butter, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt.
Stir in flour until you have a stiff sponge.
When the mixture is lukewarm, add the small cake of compressed yeast and set it in a warm place to rise overnight.
Knead and shape
In the morning, knead the dough thoroughly, adding flour until it is smooth and no longer sticky.
Let the dough rise again until light, then shape it into loaves.
Bake
Allow the loaves to rise once more, then bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for one hour.
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.
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Butter + flourtop 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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter and flour 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 starch and moisture, giving the bread a soft, tender crumb.
- Flour
- Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and holds the rising gas.
- Compressed yeast
- Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
- Butter
- Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.
The step that matters
Adding the yeast when the mixture is lukewarm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cool enough to avoid harming it, yet warm enough to keep it active during the overnight rise.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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