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Potato Yeast

A fermented potato dough made with hops, flour, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

Why it works: Potato and flour 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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Boil hops in water for 15 minutes.

  2. Peel and mash the cooked potatoes.

  3. Add flour and salt to the potatoes.

  4. Strain the hop-water over the mixture, stirring until smooth.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add a little cold yeast.

  2. Jar up the mixture and let it sit for 2 days.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Supply starch that thickens the mixture and gives the yeast material to work on.
Flour
Adds more starch for the yeast to break down, adding body and thickness to the mixture.
Cold yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing carbon dioxide and sour, yeasty flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Very hot liquid damages yeast cells and can kill them, so the mixture must cool before the yeast goes in. Adding yeast too early can leave the batch without active fermentation.

“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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