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Good Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling hops and potatoes, mashing, straining with flour, sugar, salt, and yeast, then allowing to rise.

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 ↓

Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Boil the hops in a bag with the potatoes in water until soft.

  2. Remove the hops and mash the potatoes in the water.

  3. Strain the mixture hot over the flour mixed with a little cold water.

  4. Add the sugar and salt.

  5. When lukewarm, stir in the yeast.

Rise and store

  1. Allow it to rise and then cork tightly in a jug.

  2. 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Potato + flourtop 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
Their starch thickens the liquid and gives the starter body and food for the yeast.
Flour
Forms the thick base that the yeast grows in and lets the mixture rise.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces the gas that makes the starter rise and foam.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it becomes active and ferments quickly.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter.

The step that matters

When lukewarm, stir in the yeast.. If the liquid is too hot, it will kill the yeast cells; if it is too cold, fermentation will be slow. Lukewarm keeps the yeast alive and active.

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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