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Yeast Receipt

A homemade yeast starter made from potatoes, hops, salt, sugar, ginger, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Yeast Receipt

6 large loaves

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil, peel, and mash the potatoes until fine.

  2. Boil the hops until the strength is extracted, then strain.

Make the starter

  1. In a large container, combine the mashed potatoes, strained hops, salt, sugar, and boiling water.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then add the ginger and starting yeast.

  3. Cover the container tightly and let it stand for 24 hours.

Store and use

  1. Store the yeast in an airtight container.

  2. Use ½ pint of this yeast for 6 large loaves.

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 + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch that feeds the yeast during fermentation, adding body to the starter.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma while helping preserve the starter against spoilage.
Sugar
Serves as food for the yeast, driving fermentation and gas production.
Starting yeast
Provides the live microorganisms that ferment the mixture and leaven the bread.

The step that matters

Cover and let stand for 24 hours. The container must be covered tightly so wild microbes and dust do not contaminate the starter while the yeast multiplies. Cooling the mixture before adding the yeast matters because hot liquid would kill the live culture.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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