Name: Potato Yeast
Ingredients: 2 medium potatoes; 1 tablespoon salt; 1 tablespoon sugar; 1 pint boiling water; 1 quart cold water; 1 yeast cake

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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

Mash the potatoes well.
Add salt and sugar to the mashed potatoes.
Pour boiling water over the mixture, then add cold water.
Dissolve the yeast cake in the mixture.
Let it rise until night.

Use and save

Use the liquid to make your bread.
Save the settlings to raise your yeast next time.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

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

Potatoes: Starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body and nutrients for fermentation.
Sugar: Provides quick food for the yeast, driving fermentation and gas production.
Yeast cake: Live yeast cells that ferment the mixture, producing gas that makes bread rise.

“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.