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To Make Yeast Without Fermenting

A homemade yeast starter made from hops, salt, sugar, flour, and potatoes, used for baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

To Make Yeast Without Fermenting

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. In a large pot, stir 2 ounces of hops into 9 pints of cold water and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add 2 ounces of table salt and ½ pound of sugar.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

Ferment the starter

  1. Gradually add the cooled mixture to 1 pound of sifted flour in a basin, stirring constantly.

  2. Allow the mixture to stand in a warm place for several days, stirring occasionally.

  3. Boil 8 potatoes, mash them, and mix with the flour mixture.

  4. After 24 hours, a dark scum will form on top.

  5. Stir the scum thoroughly.

  6. Strain the mixture.

  7. Transfer the yeast to a stone jar.

  8. Cork the jar.

  9. Use about ¾ cup of this yeast for regular baking.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the liquid.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, supplying fermentable sugar for the starter to work on.
Sifted flour
Provides starch and food for the wild yeasts and bacteria that develop the starter.
Potatoes
Add starch and nutrients that feed the fermenting culture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand in a warm place. Fermentation depends on temperature. Too cold and the yeast works slowly or not at all; the mixture must be cooled first so the heat does not kill the yeast cells.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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.

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