Name: Potato Bread
Ingredients: 4 pounds potatoes; 6 pounds wheat flour; yeast; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Bread

Ingredients

4 pounds potatoes
6 pounds wheat flour
yeast
coarse sea salt

Directions

Boil the potatoes until tender, then drain well.
Sprinkle a small amount of coarse sea salt over the potatoes and cover for 1 hour.
Peel and mash the potatoes until smooth.
Combine the mashed potatoes with the wheat flour and yeast to form a dough.
Let the dough rise for 3 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.

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.

Potato + wheattop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together235 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,373 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).