Why it works: Milk and potato 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 ↓
Milk Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Stir salt and flour into the milk.
Place the mixture in a kettle of water near the stove and keep it lukewarm.
When the mixture is very light, add lukewarm water.
Shape into loaves or biscuits and let them rise by the fire before cooking.
Grate the raw potatoes and mix with hop tea, boiling water, brown sugar, and salt.
When cool, add yeast and keep covered in a cool place.
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.
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Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,611 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
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Potato + teatop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together136 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Milk + teatop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together738 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Milk and flour 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
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, tea, sugar):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Potatothe original
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Sweet potatofits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, tea, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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