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Yeast That Will Not Sour

A yeast starter made by boiling hops, water, sugar, flour, potatoes, and salt, then fermenting the mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Yeast That Will Not Sour

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.

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in water for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the hops and pour the liquid into a jar with brown sugar.

Make the starter

  1. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Let the mixture stand in a warm place until it ferments.

  3. Mash the boiled potatoes and add them to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the coarse sea salt.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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. Sugar + potatotop 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
Add bitterness and aroma to the liquid.
Brown sugar
Provides sugar that the fermenting microbes consume, adding sweetness and driving fermentation.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and supplies starches and nutrients for fermentation.
Potatoes
Mashed potatoes add starch and body, feeding fermentation and thickening the starter.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand in a warm place until it ferments. Fermentation depends on warmth. In a cold place the microbes work slowly or stall, while overly hot conditions can kill them, so the starter may fail to ferment properly.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

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