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Dick Bennet's Receipt for Yeast

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 92,116 recipes mention both. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Dick Bennet's Receipt for Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato base

  1. Peel the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes with hops in enough water to cover them.

  3. Once tender, strain the water.

  4. Mash the potatoes.

  5. Return the mashed potatoes to the water.

  6. Mix well.

  7. Add flour, sugar, and salt.

  8. Cook for a few minutes.

  9. Add enough flour to make a thin batter.

Ferment

  1. Let it cool until lukewarm.

  2. Add the yeast.

  3. Mix well.

  4. Transfer to a stone jar.

  5. Cover the jar.

  6. Let it stand in a warm place for 12 hours.

  7. Stir three times during the 12 hours.

  8. Place a weight on the lid.

  9. Store in a cool place.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together3,032 recipes

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

  4. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned 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
Provide starch that forms the body of the starter and feeds the yeast.
Sugar
Gives the yeast readily available food, driving fermentation and sweetness.
Flour
Adds starch to thicken the batter so yeast has material to work on.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that leavens the starter.
Hops
Add a bitter, aromatic flavour and help preserve the starter.

The step that matters

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

Flavor stand-ins for the potato

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

  1. Mustardbetter flavor fit
  2. Arrowrootbetter flavor fit
  3. Parsnipbetter flavor fit
  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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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