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Carrie's Jug Yeast

A potato and hop-based yeast starter for brewing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and molasses are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,225 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Carrie's Jug Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes in water with the hops until done.

  2. Mash the potatoes through a colander.

  3. Lay a towel in the colander and strain the hops.

  4. Add brown sugar, molasses, and coarse sea salt to the potato mixture.

Ferment and store

  1. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the yeast.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours before using.

  3. Pour into a jug, cork tightly, and keep in a cool place.

  4. Shake well before using.

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 + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Potato + molassestop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Hops + molassestop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
Yeast
Live culture that ferments the sugars and makes the starter leaven dough.
Brown sugar
Readily available sugar that feeds the yeast during fermentation.
Molasses
Adds more fermentable sugar and a deeper, darker flavor.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma and helps preserve the starter.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cool enough that it stays alive and can ferment the sugars.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, molasses. 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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