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Home-made Yeast

A liquid yeast starter made by boiling potatoes, hops, and flour, then adding sugar, ginger, salt, and yeast.

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

Home-made Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato liquor

  1. Boil the potatoes in water until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Tie the hops in a muslin bag and boil with the potatoes.

  3. Drain the water onto enough flour to make a thin batter.

  4. Scald the batter on the stove to cook the flour.

  5. Remove the batter from heat.

Ferment and store

  1. When cool, add the mashed potatoes, sugar, ginger, salt, and yeast.

  2. Let it stand in a warm place until it has risen.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a large-mouthed jug.

  4. Cork the jug tightly.

  5. Store the jug in a cool place.

  6. Shake the bottle well before using.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

Sugar and ginger 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
Cooked and mashed, they supply starch and body to the liquid that the yeast can ferment.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise and giving it its character.
Sugar
Provides food for the yeast, fueling fermentation.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid.

The step that matters

Let it stand in a warm place until it has risen. Yeast works best at warm temperatures; if the mixture is too cold, fermentation slows and it will not rise properly. Once it has risen, cork the jug tightly so the carbon dioxide is retained and the yeast stays active in storage.

Swap the potato

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

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

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