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Yeast Starter

A yeast starter made with potato water, yeast foam, sugar, lard, salt, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Starter

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Combine 1 pint of potato water, 1 cake of yeast foam, and 2 tablespoons of sugar in a glass jar.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 3 days in a cool place.

  3. When ready to bake, add 2 cups of potato water and 2 tablespoons of sugar to the jar and set it in a warm place to foam.

Make the dough

  1. Mix 2 cups of the liquid yeast, 2 cups of warm water, 2 tablespoons of melted lard, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. Add flour until the mixture is stiff.

  3. Place the mixture in a warm jar to rise overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. In the morning, work down the dough, shape it into loaves, and let it rise again.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Yeast foam
Ferments the sugar and produces gas that leavens the dough.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that traps gas and gives the loaves their body.
Melted lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and softens texture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the dough brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Letting the starter stand and foam before mixing the dough. The starter must be fully active before it is added. Yeast that is weak or was held too cool will leave the dough slow to rise and dense, because gas production drives the loaf's lift.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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