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Potato Yeast. No. 1

A yeast dough made from mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, hops, and yeast.

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

Potato Yeast. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato mixture

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes while hot.

  2. Stir in the flour, sugar, and salt.

  3. Boil the hops in water for five minutes and pour the tea over the mixture.

  4. Strain through a colander and let cool.

Ferment

  1. When still slightly warm, add four tablespoons of baker's yeast or two yeast cakes.

  2. Set in a warm place to rise until it ceases to bubble, or until the next day.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

  4. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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, moist crumb.
Flour
Adds starch and gluten-forming protein to build structure.
Baker's yeast (in the method)
Produces carbon dioxide that makes the dough rise and become airy.
Hops
Add a bitter, herbal flavour to the tea that is poured into the mixture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only when the mixture is slightly warm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to very hot mixture can stop the rise. Cooling to slightly warm keeps the yeast alive and active while still encouraging fermentation.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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