Skip to main content
Starter

Family Yeast

A yeast starter made with potatoes, hops, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Family Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato base

  1. Boil the potatoes in 2 quarts of water until soft.

  2. Run the boiled potatoes through a colander.

  3. Add salt, ginger, and brown sugar to the mashed potatoes.

Add the hops and yeast

  1. Steep the hops in 1 quart of water, then strain the liquid over the potato mixture.

  2. Stir well and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, add ½ pint of good yeast.

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. Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Ginger + hopstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

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

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body that the yeast feeds on, thickening the starter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and a food source that helps the yeast become active.
Yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise and become lively.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cool before the yeast goes in to stay alive and ferment.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

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

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes