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Potato Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling potatoes, adding water, yeast, salt, and sugar, then allowing it to rise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Add enough water to the potato water to make 2 quarts.

  3. Let the mixture cool until lukewarm.

Make the starter

  1. Stir in the yeast, salt, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  3. Once light, bottle and cork the yeast, then store 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 + 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
Starch from the cooked potatoes feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
Yeast
Yeast ferments the sugars and makes the mixture rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sugar provides food for the yeast, speeding up fermentation.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until lukewarm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the potato water must cool to lukewarm before the yeast is stirred in. Too hot and the starter will not rise.

“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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