Skip to main content
Main

Potato Yeast

A yeast dough made from boiled potatoes, flour, hops, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Potato Yeast

Why it works: Potato and flour 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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes and hops

  1. Peel the potatoes.

  2. Boil the potatoes in a pot with the bag of hops until done.

Make the mash

  1. In a 2-gallon crock, mix the flour with enough cold water to create a smooth batter.

  2. Place a colander over the crock. Put the bag of hops in the colander. Press out the water from the hops using a potato masher. Mash the potatoes through the colander.

  3. Pour the cooking water into the crock. Remove the colander.

  4. Stir the mixture until smooth.

  5. Return the mixture to the pot. Cook until slightly thick.

  6. Transfer the mixture back to the crock. Let it cool until lukewarm.

Ferment and store

  1. Add the pint of sponge and the yeast, stirring thoroughly.

  2. Let it stand in a moderate place until the next day.

  3. Transfer to a gallon jug. Cork tightly, keeping it in a cool place.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + flourtop 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. 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, and their starch helps thicken the mash.
Flour
Forms the batter that thickens and gives the bread its structure.
Sponge from last baking
Carries live yeast culture from an earlier batch to start fermentation.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and gives it a fermented flavor.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until lukewarm before adding the sponge and yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a mixture that is still hot can stop fermentation before the bread can rise.

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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes