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Buttermilk Yeast

A yeast-based cake made with buttermilk, meal, hops, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttermilk Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Combine buttermilk, sugar, and 1 quart of meal with hop yeast.

  2. Let it rise for 8 hours.

  3. Stir in another quart of meal and shape into thin small cakes.

  4. Dry them in the sun.

Make the potato mixture

  1. Boil potatoes and hops in water until cooked, then mash the potatoes.

  2. Strain the hop tea and mix it with the mashed potatoes.

  3. Thicken with ½ pint of flour.

  4. Return the mixture to the kettle, bring to a boil, and add salt and ½ pint of yeast.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + potatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Adds moisture and a tangy acidity that shapes the flavour of the cakes.
Meal
Provides the main starch and structure that holds the shaped cakes together.
Hop yeast
Ferments the batter during the long rise, creating gas that lightens the cakes.
Potatoes
Their starch thickens the liquid and gives the mixture a soft, smooth body.
Flour
Adds further starch to thicken the mixture into a cohesive mass.

The step that matters

Letting the starter rise for 8 hours. The yeast needs the full rise to ferment and build gas. A shortened rise leaves the cakes dense, since the leavening has not had time to work.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, sugar, 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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