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Home-made Yeast

A homemade yeast starter made by boiling potatoes, hops, sugar, and flour, then fermenting with yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Home-made Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop tea

  1. Boil water, potatoes, and hops in a clean pot until potatoes break apart, about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove potatoes.

  3. Leave water and hops to boil slowly.

Make the paste

  1. Mash potatoes smooth in a bowl.

  2. Mix in sugar.

  3. Wet the paste with 3 tablespoons of boiling hop‑tea.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour.

  5. Repeat this process four times.

  6. Gradually add the remaining hop‑tea, squeezing the bag to extract all liquid.

  7. Discard the boiled hops.

  8. Wash the cloth for future use.

  9. Strain the liquid into a bowl.

Ferment

  1. Let it cool slightly.

  2. Stir in the yeast.

  3. Cover the bowl with a sieve or mosquito netting.

  4. Let it sit undisturbed to ferment.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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
Break down into starch and body, thickening the liquid and feeding the yeast.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the brew against spoilage.
White sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that the yeast converts into carbon dioxide and alcohol.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide that leavens the brew and alcohol.

The step that matters

Let it cool slightly before stirring in the yeast. Yeast is killed or slowed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool enough for the yeast to stay alive and start fermenting.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, 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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