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Nancy's Yeast

A yeast starter made from hops, potatoes, flour, sugar, and yeast.

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 hop water

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

  2. Strain the hop water through a colander into a jar with flour.

Add the potatoes and rise

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes, then strain them along with their cooking water into the jar.

  2. Add salt and sugar, then let the mixture cool.

  3. Once cool, stir in the yeast and set in a warm place to rise.

  4. After rising, move to a cool place.

  5. Use 1 cup of this yeast for two 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. 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

Potatoes
Starch and cooking water add body and moisture to the yeast mixture.
Yeast
Its live cultures ferment the sugars, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, supporting fermentation and adding sweetness.
Flour
Provides starch that the yeast can work on, giving the mixture substance.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cool before the yeast is stirred in; otherwise the starter may fail to rise.

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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