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Yeast, Kirkleatham

Bread made with hops, yeast, flour, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and potato 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 ↓

Yeast, Kirkleatham

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop starter

  1. Boil the hops in 2 quarts of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid and mix it with ¼ pound of flour and less than ¼ pint of fresh yeast.

  3. Bottle the mixture and secure the cork.

Make the bread

  1. When ready to make bread, mash 3 pounds of potatoes.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with ½ pound of flour and ½ pint of yeast.

  3. Let the mixture stand all day.

  4. Combine it with flour and let it sponge overnight.

  5. Knead and bake the next day.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter.
Potatoes
Add moisture and starch that help the dough stay soft and sponge.
Fresh yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing gas that makes the dough rise.
Flour
Provides the gluten and starch that give the bread its structure.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture sponge overnight. The yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the flour and potato mixture. Too short a sponge leaves the dough flat, while the gas produced gives the bread its rise and open crumb.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour. 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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