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Preserve

Dry Yeast

A method for making dried yeast cakes from potatoes, hops, flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dry Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mash

  1. Boil the potatoes and hops in 3 pints of water until done.

  2. Remove the potatoes, mash them, and add 1 pint of flour.

  3. Pour the boiling hop water over the mixture and beat well.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of ginger, and ½ cup of sugar.

Ferment and shape

  1. When lukewarm, add 1 cup of good yeast and let it stand for 1–2 days, stirring frequently.

  2. Add white corn meal until thick enough to form cakes about ½ inch thick.

Dry and store

  1. Place the cakes to dry in the shade with good air circulation, turning them frequently.

  2. Once thoroughly dried, store in a paper sack in a dry place.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Ginger + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that is mashed into the mixture, adding body and thickness to the mash.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the brew base.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mash, producing carbonation and flavor during the rest period.
Flour
Adds bulk and thickens the mash so it can be shaped into cakes.
Sugar
Provides sugars that the yeast consumes during fermentation.
White corn meal
Stiffens the mixture so it holds its shape as cakes for drying.

The step that matters

Drying the cakes thoroughly. Cakes that stay damp can mold or spoil, so they need good air circulation and turning until fully dry. Drying evenly removes moisture that would otherwise support microbial growth during storage.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, ginger, sugar, corn. 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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