Name: Quick Bread
Ingredients: 12 large potatoes; 1½ royal yeast cakes (soaked in ½ cup lukewarm water); 3 tablespoons salt; 3 tablespoons sugar; 3 tablespoons flour; 1 pint boiling water; 3 quarts water

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 ↓

Quick Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the potatoes until tender.
Soak the yeast cakes in lukewarm water while the potatoes are boiling.
In a jar, combine the boiling water, salt, sugar, and flour.
Add the boiled potatoes and 3 quarts of water to the jar.
Mix in the soaked yeast.
This mixture can be stored for up to two weeks.
To make one loaf of bread, warm 2 cups of the mixture and knead in the flour.
Let the dough rise, then shape it and place it in your pans.

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.

Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,032 recipes

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