Skip to main content
Starter

Good Yeast

A yeast starter made by mixing grated potatoes, hop-infused water, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid

  1. Grate the potatoes.

  2. Boil the hops in the water for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the hot hop water over the grated potatoes, stirring until thickened.

  4. Add the sugar and salt, then let the mixture cool.

Ferment

  1. Once cool, stir in the yeast.

  2. Let it stand until a thick foam rises on top.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that thickens with the hot water and gives the mixture body.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma to the finished starter.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it can ferment and produce foam.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that forms the thick foam.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast cells are killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool before the yeast goes in. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation before the foam forms.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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.

More yeast starter recipes

Potato 58Homemade 13Hop 9That Will Not Sour 4Bread 3 See all 138 →

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes