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Dey Yeast

A yeast starter made from flour, potatoes, hops, and cornmeal, dried for later use.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dey Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Put the flour in a crock.

  2. Boil and skin the potatoes, then press them through a colander into the flour.

  3. Add the water in which the hops have boiled for 5 minutes and mix well.

  4. Let the mixture stand for 15 minutes or until warm like milk.

  5. Pour in enough cold water to achieve a sponge-like consistency.

  6. Soak the dry yeast and add it to the mixture.

  7. Let it rise until very light, stirring it down 3 or 4 times.

Dry and store

  1. Put the corn meal into a bread bowl and pour the raised yeast into the middle.

  2. Mix until quite stiff, then spread it out thin and dry it in the shade, turning occasionally.

  3. It will dry in a couple of days.

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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Hops + corntop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the bulk of the starter and provides starch that the yeast feeds on.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, giving the starter a soft, sponge-like body.
Dry yeast
Ferments the mixture so it rises and becomes light.
Hops
Flavour the water and add bitterness that helps keep the starter stable.
Corn meal
Absorbs the raised mixture and gives the dried starter a firm, granular body.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until very light. Yeast needs warm conditions and enough time to ferment the starch. Stirring it down releases built-up gas and lets the yeast keep working evenly, so the starter rises fully before drying.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, hops, corn. 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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