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Yeast

A potato-based bread dough flavored with hops, salt, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes and soak them in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the potatoes in a covered kettle for 10-12 minutes.

  3. Drain the cooked potatoes and place them in a bowl, removing any dark specks.

Make the hop water

  1. In another saucepan, boil 1 quart of cold water with 1 tablespoon of hops.

  2. Strain the hop water into a measuring cup, topping it up with boiling water if needed.

Make the dough

  1. Mash the potatoes with a wooden pestle and mix in the salt, sugar, and flour.

  2. Gradually pour the hop water onto the potato mixture, mixing well.

  3. Let the mixture cool until nearly lukewarm, then add the yeast and stir gently.

  4. Cover the bowl tightly and let it rise overnight.

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. 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
Starch and body that give the bread a soft, moist crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the bread together as it rises.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds a touch of sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture until nearly lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop the rise. Cooling to nearly lukewarm keeps the yeast alive and active for the overnight fermentation.

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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