Skip to main content
Bread

Wheat and White Potato Bread

A bread made from mashed potatoes, milk, water, salt, sugar, and flour, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Wheat and White Potato Bread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the new milk and boiling water with the mashed potatoes.

  2. Stir in the coarse sea salt, sugar, and enough flour to form a stiff batter.

  3. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise until it doubles in size.

  4. Stir in more flour and knead it slightly.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into three loaves and place them in deep tins.

  2. Allow the loaves to rise again until doubled.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°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. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that give the bread a soft, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaves their shape.
Milk
Adds moisture and milk solids that help the crust brown and the crumb stay soft.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and promotes browning in the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise until doubled. The rising step lets yeast produce gas that expands the dough. Underproofed loaves stay dense, while overproofed dough can collapse in the oven, so judge by size rather than time alone.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, flour. 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.

More potato bread recipes

Sweet 14Rolls 5Beef and Pudding 4Hop 3Hopped 3Irish 3 See all 263 →

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipes