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Bread

Sweet Potato Bread

A loaf made from flour, baking powder, lard, mashed sweet potatoes, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sweet potato work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 627 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Potato Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the cold mashed sweet potatoes with flour, baking powder, lard, and salt.

  2. Add enough water to form a firm dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it with a biscuit cutter.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Flour + sweet potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the bread rise and turn light.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and helps the bread brown.
Cold mashed sweet potatoes
Adds moisture and body, and gives the bread its sweet flavour and colour.

The step that matters

Add enough water to form a firm dough. Too much water makes the dough sticky and hard to cut, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. Flour absorbs liquid as it rests, so add water gradually until the dough holds together firmly.

“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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