Name: Potato Yeast
Ingredients: 6 medium potatoes; 1 quart water; 1 small handful hops; 1 tablespoon salt; ½ teacup sugar

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 yeast

Peel and boil the potatoes in 1 quart of water with the hops.
Sift the mixture through a colander after steeping the hops.
Stir in the salt and sugar until dissolved.
Keep the mixture in a cool place.

Use

Use 1 cup of this yeast for baking.

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).
Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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 from the potatoes feeds the fermentation and gives the liquid body.
Hops: Hops add bitterness and aroma and help preserve the liquid.
Sugar: Sugar provides food for the yeast so it can ferment and produce gas.