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Bread

A yeast‑leavened bread made with mashed potatoes, flour, milk, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato and ferment

  1. Boil the potatoes until done, then strain and mash them until smooth.

  2. Add enough cold water to achieve a cream-like consistency.

  3. Warm the milk and mix in the flour and yeast to create a ferment.

  4. Let the ferment rise for 3-4 hours until it falls.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, place the flour and strain the ferment into it, mixing to form a thin dough.

  2. Let the dough rise for about 4 hours until it falls again.

  3. Mix the salt into the warm milk or water, then add it to the dough and mix until smooth.

  4. Incorporate the remaining flour, let it rise for 2 hours, then bake in tins or on the oven floor.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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
Mashed potato adds moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the bread.
Yeast
Yeast ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise.
Flour
Flour forms the gluten structure that holds the bread's shape and crumb.
Milk or water
Liquid hydrates the flour so the dough can form and develop gluten.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise fully. Yeast needs enough time to produce gas and build structure. Rising too briefly leaves a dense loaf, while the ferment and dough should show the stated fall before the next step.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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