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Boiled Potato Yeast

A yeast bread made from boiled potatoes, hops, flour, sugar, yeast, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Boiled Potato Yeast

2 quarts total

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potato mixture

  1. Peel, soak, and boil the potatoes until they break into small pieces.

  2. Boil the hops in 1 quart of water, then drain and mash the potatoes.

  3. Add the hop water and enough hot water to make 2 quarts.

  4. Strain the mixture, rubbing all the potato through.

Make the starter

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the flour mixed with cold water to form a smooth paste, and add the sugar.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring well, then let it cool.

  3. Add the yeast and let it rise.

  4. Once risen, add the coarse sea salt.

Store

  1. Store in a covered stone jar in a cool cellar.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Potato + hopstop 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

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, giving the mixture a thick, smooth texture.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the mixture.
Flour
Forms a smooth paste that thickens the liquid and feeds the yeast.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast to ferment.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture, rubbing all the potato through. Pushing the potato through a strainer breaks down lumps so the mixture becomes smooth and evenly thick. Leftover lumps can keep starch unavailable to the yeast and leave an uneven texture.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

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