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Sweet Potato Bread

A bread made by boiling sweet potatoes, mixing with wheat flour, and baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and wheat share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 59 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil sweet potatoes with the skins on until tender.

  2. Peel and mash the sweet potatoes through a colander.

  3. Mix the mashed sweet potatoes with an equal quantity of wheat flour.

  4. If the mixture is too moist, add more wheat flour; if too dry, add a little boiling water.

Shape and bake

  1. Knead the mixture quickly or roll it into diamond shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Sweet potato + wheattop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Sweet potato + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Provide the bulk, moisture and natural sweetness of the dough.
Wheat flour
Binds the mashed sweet potato into a dough that holds its shape when shaped and baked.

The step that matters

Adjusting the moisture of the dough. Sweet potato moisture varies, so the mixture must be checked before shaping. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to handle, while too little leaves it crumbly. Adding flour or a little boiling water corrects the balance so the dough holds together.

Swap the sweet potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatothe original
  3. Kalefits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wheat, flour. 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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