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 Ball Bread
Ingredients
Directions
Soften the yeast cake in a small amount of water.
Mix the softened yeast with the mashed potatoes, sugar, and salt.
Cover and let it sit for two days in winter or sooner in summer.
Mix the bread sponge with warm milk or water and add half of the potato mixture.
Let it rise and proceed as with other bread.
To the remaining potato mixture, add another cup of mashed potatoes and set aside for the next baking day.
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 + milktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, milk):
- Sweet potatofits about as well
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Potatothe original
- Arrowrootfits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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