Why it works: Potato and honey work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 351 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓
Yeast, Potato
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the potatoes
Boil any quantity of good potatoes in their jackets until soft.
Peel, weigh, and mash the potatoes quickly.
For each pound of potatoes, mix in ½ quart of boiling water. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.
Make the starter
Add 1 ounce of honey or brown sugar for each pound of potatoes.
Boil the mixture until it thickens to a batter-like consistency.
Pour it out and let it cool to lukewarm.
Stir in 1 tablespoon of solid yeast for each quart of water.
Cover with a cloth and let it sit for 24 hours.
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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Potato + honeytop 20% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together351 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Good potatoes
- Provide the starch and bulk that form the body of the bread.
- Boiling water
- Hydrates the mashed potato and loosens it into a smooth, pourable batter.
- Honey or brown sugar
- Feeds the yeast with sugar and adds sweetness and a mild browning potential.
- Solid yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
The step that matters
Boil the mixture until it thickens. Cooking the potato starch gelatinises it, so the batter holds moisture and ferments evenly. Under-cooked batter stays thin and can ferment unevenly.
“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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