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Bread

Yeast

A potato bread made with hops, flour, sugar, ginger, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato mixture

  1. Pare and boil the potatoes until done.

  2. Mash the potatoes until smooth and free from lumps.

  3. Mix in flour, brown sugar, ginger, and salt.

Add the hopped water

  1. Strain the hops from the boiling water after 15 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the potato mixture and stir well.

  3. Heat the mixture on the stove until it boils, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

  4. Pour the mixture into a large bowl or stone pot to cool.

Ferment and bottle

  1. When blood-warm, add the bakers' yeast.

  2. Keep in a warm place until well raised, then transfer to a stone jug and secure with a cork.

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. Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, giving the bread its thick, mashed texture.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the mixture and gives it body.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and food for the yeast, supporting fermentation.
Bakers' yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that makes the mixture rise.
Dried hops
Contribute bitterness and aroma to the flavour of the bread.

The step that matters

Add the yeast when blood-warm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, while cool liquid slows its activity. Blood-warm is a gentle temperature that lets it start fermenting and raise the mixture evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, sugar, ginger. 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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