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Potato Bread

A bread made from boiled potatoes, flour, yeast, and milk, baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Potato Bread

Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in their skins.

  2. Drain the potatoes.

  3. Dry the potatoes.

  4. Peel the potatoes.

  5. Weigh the potatoes.

  6. Mash the potatoes until smooth.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes with the flour in a ratio of 2½ pounds of potatoes to 7 pounds of flour.

  2. Add yeast.

  3. Knead the dough using milk instead of water.

  4. Allow the dough to rise until well risen.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake the bread in a preheated oven at 300°F (150°C) for longer than regular bread.

  2. Leave the bread in the oven with the door open for a while.

  3. Remove the bread from the 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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 bread a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the main structure as its proteins form gluten with kneading.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture, fat and sugars that soften the crumb and aid browning.

The step that matters

Allow the dough to rise until well risen. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to expand the dough. Under-proofed dough stays dense, while over-proofed dough can collapse in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk. 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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