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 ↓
Potato Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the batter
Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.
Stir well and scald with boiling water to make a stiff batter.
Mash the potatoes.
Add the mashed potatoes to the mixture.
Heat the mixture and add more boiling potato water until it reaches a very thin batter consistency.
Add about ½ cup boiling hot water until it is warm enough to touch.
Add the yeast and rise
Stir in the yeast that has been soaked in ½ cup warm water.
Cover and set in a warm place.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Potatoes
- Add starch and moisture that give the dough a soft, tender crumb.
- Yeast
- Produces gas that makes the mixture rise and become airy.
- Flour
- Provides the starch and gluten structure that holds the bread together.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.
The step that matters
Adding the yeast to a warm mixture. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the batter must be cooled to warm, not hot, before the yeast goes in. Warm, not scalding, temperatures let the yeast grow and raise the dough.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Beetrootfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- 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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