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To Make Good Yeast

A method for making yeast using mashed potatoes, water, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

To Make Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil the potatoes in 1 quart of water until soft.

  2. Peel and mash the potatoes finely.

  3. Add 2 cups of the potato boiling water to the mashed potatoes.

Make the starter

  1. Mix in 3 tablespoons of brown sugar.

  2. Stir in 1 teacup of yeast.

  3. Let it sit for 3 hours until ready to use.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and moisture that form the body of the starter.
Brown sugar
Provides sugar that the yeast ferments, adding sweetness and flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces carbon dioxide, which makes the mixture rise and bubble.

“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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