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Potato Yeast

A yeast dough made from mashed potatoes, water, sugar, salt, and yeast that rises for several hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

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 dough base

  1. Boil the potatoes until done, then mash them.

  2. Pour 3 pints of boiling water over the mashed potatoes.

  3. Run the mixture through a colander.

Add yeast and rise

  1. Stir in 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon of salt.

  2. When the mixture is warm, stir in ½ cup of yeast.

  3. In summer, this will rise in 3 to 4 hours.

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.

  1. 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
Their starch and water add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the bread.
Yeast
Feeds on the sugars and produces gas, which makes the dough rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and helps the dough brown lightly and taste slightly sweet.
Salt
Controls yeast activity and adds flavour to the bread.

The step that matters

When the mixture is warm, stir in the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid and works poorly when cold. Adding it only once the mixture is warm lets it survive and start fermenting, so the dough rises properly.

“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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