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To Make Dky Yeast for the Summer

A yeast dough made with hops, potatoes, sugar, salt, and Indian meal, shaped into cakes and dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Dky Yeast for the Summer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Boil the bag of hops with the sliced potatoes in 1 gallon of water for 1 hour.

  2. Allow the mixture to cool, then add 1 cup of sugar, ¾ cup of salt, and ½ cup of baker's yeast.

Shape and dry

  1. Mix in enough Indian meal to form a stiff dough.

  2. Shape the dough into rolls and cut into ½ inch thick cakes.

  3. Dry the cakes in moderately cool air on a frame covered with mosquito netting.

  4. Cover the cakes with netting while drying to keep flies away.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 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

Potatoes
Starch and moisture that feed the yeast and help bind the mixture.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and slow spoilage in the liquid.
Baker's yeast
Ferments sugars to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it becomes active and adds sweetness.
Indian meal
Absorbs liquid and forms the stiff dough that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the boiled liquid must cool enough before the yeast goes in to stay alive and work.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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