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Home-made Yeast

A homemade yeast starter prepared with water, flour, salt, molasses, yeast, hops, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Home-made Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hops and flour

  1. Boil the hops in 3 pints of water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain half of the hot water through a sieve onto 9 tablespoons of flour and mix well.

Add the rest and the potatoes

  1. Add the remaining hot water, 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt, and ½ cup of molasses.

  2. When the mixture is blood warm, stir in 1 cup of yeast.

  3. Boil the potatoes until soft, then pass them through a colander, moistening with some hot water.

  4. Squeeze the bag of hops and return the pulp to the water.

Combine and store

  1. Combine everything in a crock with a lid and 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + molassestop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Molasses + potatotop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Flour + hopstop 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

Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that leavens and gives the starter its activity.
Flour
Provides starch that feeds the yeast and thickens the mixture into a body.
Molasses
Adds sugar as food for the yeast, along with a rich, dark sweetness.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, giving the starter more food for the yeast.
Hops
Contribute bitterness and aroma, and help keep the starter from spoiling too quickly.

The step that matters

Stirring in the yeast. Yeast is a living organism that is damaged by excessive heat, so the mixture must be only blood warm before it is added. Too hot and the yeast can die, leaving the starter unable to ferment.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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