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London Bread

A potato-based bread made with yeast, flour, sugar, and shortening, baked at 300°F for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

London Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the starter

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes and mix with enough water to make 1 quart.

  2. Stir in 2 tablespoons of salt and 3 tablespoons of sugar.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add 1 cake of dry yeast and beat well.

  4. Cover and let it stand in a warm place overnight.

Make and rise the dough

  1. In the morning, combine 2 quarts of water, 1 sifter of flour, 3 tablespoons of shortening, and 4 tablespoons of sugar.

  2. Add the yeast mixture and enough flour to form a stiff dough.

  3. Set the dough aside to rise until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into loaves and let them rise again until light.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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

Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that feed the yeast and keep the crumb soft.
Dry yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that traps gas and gives the loaves their structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast for fermentation and adds a little sweetness and browning.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to form a stiff dough. Too little flour leaves the dough slack and unable to hold its shape or trap gas, while too much makes the bread dense and dry. Judge the stiffness by feel rather than measuring only by volume.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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