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Bread Set with Dry Yeast Cake

A yeast bread made with a dry yeast cake, potatoes, flour, lard, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Bread Set with Dry Yeast Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the starter

  1. Dissolve the yeast cake in ½ cup of warm water.

  2. Boil and mash the potatoes, then pour over them the water they were boiled in and add enough flour to make a moderately stiff batter.

  3. When the mixture is cool, add the dissolved yeast cake and let it rise overnight in a warm place.

Make the dough

  1. In the morning, add 3 cups of warm water, salt, and as much sifted flour as you can mix in with a spoon.

  2. Let the mixture rise in a warm place until light.

  3. Once risen, add lard and sugar, then knead stiffly, adding more flour as needed.

  4. Let it rise again, then shape into loaves.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Dry yeast cake
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Potatoes
Their starch and cooking water add moisture and body to the batter and dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the starter rise overnight until cool and bubbly. Yeast activity drives the rise, and adding the yeast to a hot mixture would kill it. Cooling the potato batter first protects the yeast before the long fermentation builds flavour and lift.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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