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Baking-powder Bread

A quick bread made with flour, baking powder, salt, potato, sugar, and milk or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baking-powder Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the dry ingredients thoroughly.

  2. Rub in the boiled potato.

  3. Add liquid to make a stiff batter or soft dough.

Bake and finish

  1. Turn into a greased bread pan.

  2. Smooth the top with a knife dipped in melted butter.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about an hour.

  4. When done, moisten the crust slightly with cold water and wrap in a clean cloth until cold.

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 + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the loaf once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the bread rises without yeast.
Boiled potato
Adds moisture and starch that keep the crumb soft.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour and sets the batter or dough consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid. Too much liquid makes the batter slack and the loaf dense, while too little leaves dry pockets of flour. Aim for the stiff batter or soft dough the recipe describes, since baking powder starts releasing gas as soon as it is wet and the loaf should go into the pan promptly.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk. 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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