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Bread

Bread

A yeasted bread made from mashed potatoes, milk, water, sugar, butter, and flour.

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

Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. In a large bowl, combine the mashed potatoes, milk, and water.

  2. Add the sugar and butter, and let the mixture cool.

  3. Stir in enough flour to form a sponge.

  4. Add the soft yeast and mix well.

  5. Cover and let it rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, knead the dough and let it rise again.

  2. Shape the dough and bake when light.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Add starch and body, and help the bread hold moisture.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars to produce gas that makes the dough rise.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough structure and chew.
Milk
Adds moisture, richness, and softness to the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a softer texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until light before baking. The yeast needs time to produce enough gas to leaven the dough. Baking too early gives a dense loaf, while letting it over-rise can collapse the structure.

Swap the potato

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

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

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