Skip to main content
Dessert

Potato Buns

A sweet potato bun made with mashed potatoes, flour, baking powder, milk, yeast, butter, sugar, nutmeg, currants, and glazed with molasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Buns

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato base

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash and sift them through a sieve.

  2. Add 1½ pints of flour, 2 tablespoons of baking powder, and 1 pint of milk or cream to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Form the mixture into small cakes and bake in a greased tin for 20 minutes.

Make the dough

  1. In a cup, break 1 egg and fill it with milk, then mix with ½ cup of yeast, ½ cup of butter, and 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Add enough flour to make a soft dough and flavor with nutmeg.

  3. Let the dough rise until very light, then mold into biscuits with a few currants.

  4. Let rise a second time, then bake, glazing with a mixture of molasses and milk when nearly done.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 moisture that make the dough soft and tender when mashed.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the buns rise and become light.
Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and gives it an airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the crust brown during baking.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, binding the dough together.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light. Yeast needs time to ferment and trap gas; underproofed dough stays dense, while the second rise builds the airy texture the buns depend on.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, milk, egg, butter, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesMolasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes