Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Potato Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the potato mixture
Boil the sliced potatoes in 3 pints of water until tender.
Remove the potatoes and mash them well.
Add 1 quart of the potato cooking water to the mashed potatoes.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Pour the hot mixture over 1 pint of flour.
Beat the mixture until smooth.
Rise and store
When the mixture is warm, add 1 teacup of yeast.
Place the mixture in a moderately warm spot until it rises.
Store the risen dough in a cool place.
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.
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Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 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
- Potatoes
- Cooked and mashed, they add starch and moisture that give the dough body.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that the mixture builds on once it is beaten smooth.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
- Potato cooking water
- Carries starch and moisture from the potatoes into the dough.
The step that matters
Adding the yeast while the mixture is warm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be warm rather than hot before it goes in. If it is too hot, the dough will not rise.
“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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