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Ferment with Compressed Yeast

A fermented mixture of potatoes, flour, sugar, compressed yeast, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Ferment with Compressed Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato mash

  1. Boil the potatoes until done.

  2. Mash the potatoes with some of the boiling water and the flour to a smooth paste.

  3. Add more water to thin the mixture to make 10 quarts and cool it to lukewarm (about 75°F).

Ferment

  1. Strain the mixture and add the sugar and yeast.

  2. Cover the tub and let it sit undisturbed for 10 to 12 hours.

  3. For a quicker fermentation, raise the temperature to 95°F and use more yeast to be ready in 5 to 6 hours.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body that the yeast ferments into a thick, workable mash.
Flour
Adds starch to the paste, giving the fermenting mixture body and structure.
Sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and drives gas production.
Compressed yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing carbon dioxide and flavor.

The step that matters

Cooling to lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast works best at moderate warmth. If the mash is too hot, it can kill the yeast, and if it is too cold, fermentation becomes very slow.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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