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 ↓
A Good Reliable Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Steep the hops in a porcelain or bright tin kettle.
Boil the sliced potatoes in 2 quarts of water until very soft, then mash until smooth and creamy.
Prepare the flour by wetting and rubbing it to a smooth paste.
Pour the boiling potato water into the flour, stirring smoothly, and let it boil for a few minutes while stirring continuously.
Make the starter
Add the hop water, mashed potatoes, salt, and sugar; stir thoroughly and set aside to cool.
When warm, stir in the yeast and let it rise in a warm place for 12 hours.
Store
Transfer the mixture into a well-cleaned and scalded air-tight vessel and store it in the cellar.
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.
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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 potatoes add starch and body, giving the starter a creamy texture and food for the yeast.
- Flour
- Cooked into a paste, it thickens the mixture and supplies starch that the yeast can feed on.
- Sugar
- Provides quick sugars that feed the yeast and drive fermentation.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the starter rise and turn active.
- Hops
- Adds bitterness and aroma, and its natural compounds help preserve the starter.
The step that matters
Stirring the flour paste while pouring in boiling water. Adding boiling liquid to flour without constant stirring forms lumps that will not dissolve evenly. Lumps leave dry pockets of starch that cook unevenly and give the starter an uneven texture.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, flour, sugar):
- Mustardfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- 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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