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Bread

Bread with Compressed Yeast

A potato-based bread made with compressed yeast, flour, water, salt, sugar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bread with Compressed Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Cook the potatoes in 1 pint of water until done, then mash them.

  2. When the potatoes are lukewarm, dissolve the yeast in a little water and add it to the potatoes.

  3. Stir in enough sifted flour until the mixture is thicker than griddle cake batter and set it in a warm place to rise.

  4. Add 1 quart of lukewarm water, salt, sugar, and butter to the sponge.

Make and rise the dough

  1. Mix in enough flour to form a soft dough that can be handled well.

  2. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic, about 25 minutes, then set it to rise again in a warm place.

Shape and bake

  1. When the dough has doubled in size, shape it into loaves and prick each one with a fork.

  2. Place the loaves in well-greased pans and bake when light.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Their starch and water add moisture and body to the dough, helping it stay soft.
Compressed yeast
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Sifted flour
Its proteins form gluten when kneaded, giving the dough structure to hold gas.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so fermentation proceeds, and adds a little sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Knead the dough until smooth and elastic. Kneading develops gluten strands that trap the gas made by the yeast. Under-kneaded dough rises poorly and bakes up dense and coarse.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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