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Drink

Spirit From Potatoes

A distilled alcoholic beverage produced from fermented potato starch and malt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and malt work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Spirit From Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Convert the starch

  1. Heat 75 gallons of water in a fermenting vat to 176°F (80°C).

  2. In another vessel, mix potato starch, water, and oil of vitriol. Pour the mixture into the first vessel.

  3. Maintain the heat for about six hours until starch converts to sugar.

  4. Add whiting to neutralize the acid.

  5. Draw off the saccharine liquor.

Ferment and distill

  1. Ferment the liquor with yeast.

  2. Distill the spirit.

Second method

  1. For the second method, steam and bruise potatoes into pulp.

  2. Mix the pulp with water at 63°F (17°C) in a tub, using 416 lbs. of water for every 100 lbs. of potatoes.

  3. Add malt and allow to ferment together.

  4. Add caustic potash to neutralize tartaric acid.

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 + malttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Potato + whitingtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Whiting + malttop 45% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Potato starch
Supplies the starch that is converted into fermentable sugar.
Malt
Provides enzymes that convert starch into sugar for fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar into alcohol.
Oil of vitriol
Acidifies the mixture to help break down the starch.
Whiting
Neutralizes the acid after starch conversion.

The step that matters

Maintain the heat for about six hours until starch converts to sugar. Starch only becomes fermentable sugar when it is broken down fully, and the heat must stay steady for that to happen. Stopping early leaves unconverted starch, which yeast cannot ferment, so the spirit yield drops.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (whiting, malt):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against whiting, malt. 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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