Skip to main content
Main

Potato Yeast— No. 1

A yeast starter made by boiling hops, mixing with grated potatoes, salt, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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— No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter base

  1. Boil the hops in 1 quart of water.

  2. Strain the hop water into a bowl with the grated potatoes, salt, and sugar.

  3. Boil the mixture hard for 5 minutes.

Add the yeast

  1. Let it cool, then add 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. Sugar + hopstop 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
Supply starch and body, thickening the mixture and providing material for the yeast to work on.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and gives the yeast a readily available food source to ferment.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces carbon dioxide, which makes the starter rise and bubble.
Hops
Contribute bitterness and aroma, and their natural preservative qualities help the starter keep.

The step that matters

Let it cool, then add the yeast. Yeast is a living organism, and high heat kills it. After the hard boil, the mixture must cool enough that adding the yeast will not destroy it, or the starter will not ferment.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes