Name: Cream of Tartar, Yeast
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon cream of tartar; 1 tablespoon sugar; 1 tablespoon flour; 2 cups warm water

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream of Tartar, Yeast

Ingredients

1 tablespoon cream of tartar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon flour
2 cups warm water

Directions

Mix cream of tartar, sugar, and flour into a smooth paste with a little warm water.
Add 2 cups of warm water and mix well.
Bottle the mixture in the morning; it will be ready for use by midday.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together30,481 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream of tartar: Adds acidity that helps lower the pH and supports the starter's fermentation.
Sugar: Feeds the yeast, providing the fuel that drives fermentation and gas production.
Flour: Supplies starches and proteins for the yeast to feed on and thickens the mixture into a paste.

“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.