Skip to main content
Bread

Potato Yeast

A fermented potato and flour dough flavored with hops.

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

Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Yeast

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Boil hops in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Peel and mash the cooked potatoes.

  3. Add flour and salt to the mashed potatoes.

  4. Strain the hop-water over the mixture, stirring until smooth.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add a little cold yeast.

  2. Jar up the mixture and let it sit for 2 days.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Its proteins form gluten, giving the dough structure and chew.
Potatoes
Their starch and moisture soften the dough and provide food for the yeast.
Yeast
Ferments sugars and produces gas, which makes the dough rise.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop the fermentation before it starts. Cooling keeps the yeast alive so it can leaven the dough.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour. 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

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesNut BreadNut Bread109 recipes