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Mrs. Charles H. Gibson's Very Best Hop and Potato Yeast

A yeast made by boiling potatoes with hops, sugar, salt, alum, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Mrs. Charles H. Gibson's Very Best Hop and Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash the potatoes clean, leaving the skin on.

  2. Soak the potatoes in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Boil the potatoes in 3 quarts of boiling water with the hops until the potatoes are done.

  4. Drain the water.

  5. Remove the skins.

  6. Mash the potatoes smoothly, adding the reserved boiling water.

  7. If too much water has evaporated, add more boiling water to make nearly 3 quarts.

  8. Let the mixture cool.

Make the yeast

  1. Stir in the sugar, salt, powdered alum, and dissolved yeast.

  2. Cover and let it rise in a warm place in winter or a cool place in summer.

  3. When it has risen well, stir and bottle the yeast.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that breaks down into sugars to feed the yeast and gives the mixture body.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the liquid.
White sugar
Provides food for the yeast so it becomes active and rises.
Compressed yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or slowed by high heat, so the mash must cool enough before the yeast is stirred in to stay alive and active.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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