Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓
Liquid Yeast for Bread or Rolls
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the potatoes until thoroughly done, then mash them through a sieve.
Add the warm water, including the water used for boiling the potatoes.
Mix in the flour, salt, sugar, and the yeast cake dissolved in a little warm water.
Let the mixture stand overnight or until it is foaming on top.
To make bread or rolls, use flour, salt, and lard as for biscuits, adding 1 tablespoon of sugar for each quart of flour.
Mix the dough with the liquid yeast and shape it into loaves or rolls.
Leave the shaped dough in a warm place for 3 to 4 hours until ready to bake.
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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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together434 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
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Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10,383 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 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 (flour, sugar, bread):
- Arrowrootfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Sweet potatofits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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