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Wheat Bread

A loaf of wheat bread made with boiled potatoes, flour, yeast, milk, lard, sugar, salt, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Wheat Bread

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 ↓

Wheat Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Save the water from boiled potatoes and pour it over the riced potatoes.

  2. Add flour to create a medium batter and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Dissolve half a cake of yeast foam in half a cup warm water and stir into the batter.

  4. Let the mixture stand overnight in a cool place.

Mix and knead the dough

  1. In the morning, combine two quarts of flour, lard, sugar, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the flour mixture and let it cool.

  3. Add the egg, mix with a spoon, then knead until stiff.

Shape and bake

  1. Let the dough rise, knead again, and place it in pans, filling them halfway.

  2. When the dough rises to the top of the pans, bake for nearly an hour.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Potatoes
Their starch and cooking water add moisture and help the dough stay soft.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the bread its structure and chew.
Yeast foam
Ferments the batter, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Milk
Adds moisture, softness and richness to the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the dough.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise to the top of the pans. Rising is driven by yeast activity, so the dough should be fully risen before baking. Baking too early gives a dense loaf, while letting it over-proof can collapse the structure and leave a coarse crumb.

Swap the potato

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

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

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