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Dessert

Yeast Cakes, or Preserved Yeast

Yeast cakes are dough cakes made with hops, potatoes, flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and Indian meal, then dried and later used as yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Yeast Cakes, or Preserved Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop water and potatoes

  1. Boil the hops in 2 quarts of water.

  2. Cook the potatoes until tender, then mash them.

  3. Combine the mashed potatoes with the flour.

Make the dough

  1. Pour the boiling hop water over the flour through a sieve and mix until smooth.

  2. While warm, add the salt and sugar.

  3. Before it cools, stir in the yeast.

  4. Once the mixture is light, add Indian meal until it reaches a dough consistency.

Dry and store the cakes

  1. Roll out the dough into cakes and place them on a cloth in a dry area, turning them daily.

  2. After 7 to 10 days, store the cakes in a bag in a dry place.

  3. To use, soak a cake in warm milk or water, mash it smooth, and use as yeast.

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. Hops + potatotop 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
Mashed potato adds starch and moisture, giving the dough a soft, moist texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with the liquids.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light.
Hops
Flavours the liquid with a bitter, aromatic note and aids preservation.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast while the mixture is still warm but not hot. Yeast is sensitive to temperature. If the mixture is too hot it can kill the yeast, and once it cools too far the yeast becomes sluggish, so the dough may not rise properly.

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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