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Bread

Nancy's Yeast

A yeast starter made with hops, potatoes, sugar, and yeast for baking bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Nancy's Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Boil the hops in 4 quarts of water until reduced to 3 quarts.

  2. In a jar, combine 5 tablespoons of sifted flour with the strained hop water.

  3. Boil the potatoes.

  4. Mash the boiled potatoes and strain them along with the cooking water.

  5. Add the mashed potatoes and water to the mixture.

  6. Stir in 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 cup of sugar.

  7. Allow the mixture to cool.

  8. Add 1 teacup of good yeast.

Rise and store

  1. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  2. Move the mixture to a cool place.

  3. Use 1 cup of this yeast for two loaves of bread.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter.
Sifted flour
Thickens the liquid and gives the yeast starches to feed on.
Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that feed the yeast and give body to the starter.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, helping it become active and produce gas.
Good yeast
Leavens the starter, producing gas that makes the bread rise.

The step that matters

Set the mixture in a warm place to rise. Yeast works best in warmth; too cold and it stays sluggish, too hot and it can die. Rising gives the yeast time to multiply and become active before it is cooled and stored.

Swap the potato

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

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

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