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Bread

White Bread

A yeast bread made with flour, yeast, salt, lard, sugar, water, and boiled potatoes.

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

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 ↓

White Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the starter

  1. Boil the potatoes in 1 quart of water until soft, then strain through a ricer or sieve into a large bowl.

  2. Ensure there is still 1 quart of liquid. While hot, add the lard and sugar.

  3. Once cooled enough not to scald, add the softened yeast.

  4. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise for about 2 hours until light.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough and knead well without letting it cool.

  2. Place the kneaded dough in a warm, draft-free area to rise for another 2 hours until light and springy.

  3. Mold the dough into loaves and place in buttered tins.

Bake

  1. When the loaves are light (about 30-40 minutes), bake in an oven preheated to 400°F (200°C), then reduce to 300°F (150°C) after the bread begins to brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 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

Flour
Forms the stiff dough structure that traps gas and sets into the crumb when baked.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Potatoes
Their starch and moisture keep the loaf soft and slow staling.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens the texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Kneading without letting the dough cool. Warm dough lets the yeast stay active and gluten develop well, so the dough rises evenly and stays springy instead of turning stiff and dense.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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