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Home-made Yeast

A homemade yeast starter made from hops, mashed potatoes, sugar, salt, flour, water, and commercial yeast.

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

Home-made Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop liquid

  1. Pour boiling water over dry hops in a porcelain-lined saucepan and simmer for 25 minutes.

  2. Strain the hot hop water over the hot mashed potatoes, stirring gradually.

  3. Mix sugar, coarse sea salt, and flour together, then add to the potato mixture.

  4. Beat the mixture thoroughly to remove lumps until a thin, even batter forms.

  5. Add 4 quarts of boiling water.

Make the starter

  1. Let the mixture cool to barely blood warm.

  2. Add a cake of grocer’s yeast and mix well.

  3. Cover the mixture.

  4. Let it rise overnight in a warm place (about 80°F/27°C) for at least 6 hours.

  5. In the morning, beat the yeast well.

  6. Let it rise for another 12 hours, beating several times.

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. 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

Dry hops
Provide bitterness and aroma, and their infused water gives the starter its flavour base.
Hot mashed potatoes
Supply starch and moisture that feed the yeast as it ferments.
Sugar
Gives the yeast an easily used food source, speeding fermentation and rising.
Flour
Adds starch and body to the batter, giving the yeast more material to work on.
Grocer’s yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the starter rise.

The step that matters

Cooling to barely blood warm. If the mixture is too hot, it can kill the yeast; if it is too cool, fermentation slows. Blood warm is gentle enough for live yeast to start working.

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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