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Bread

Manitoba White Bread

A yeast bread made with mashed potatoes, sugar, salt, flour, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Manitoba White Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add the mashed potatoes and pour in 2 quarts of boiling water. If desired, use 3 quarts of water without changing other ingredients.

  3. When the mixture is lukewarm, dissolve the yeast cake in lukewarm water and add it.

  4. Let the mixture rise in a warm place overnight until light.

Shape and bake

  1. Add 3 measures of flour for every 1 measure of water.

  2. Let it rise 2 to 3 times, then place in pans to rise again.

  3. Bake as usual.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Add starch and moisture that help the dough stay soft and hold gas during rising.
Yeast cake
Produces carbon dioxide as it ferments the sugars, which makes the dough rise.
Flour
Forms gluten, the protein network that traps gas and gives the loaf its structure.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness and browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise in a warm place overnight until light. Yeast activity depends on warmth and time. Too cool and the dough rises slowly. Too long and the gluten weakens, so the loaf can collapse or turn sour.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, 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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