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Yeast. No. 1

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Yeast. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop water

  1. Boil the potatoes until soft.

  2. Mash the potatoes in the boiling water.

  3. Add the dried hops and boil for 10 minutes, then strain through a colander.

Build the starter

  1. Stir in the salt and thin with milk-warm water until it resembles thin waffle batter.

  2. When lukewarm, stir in the liquid yeast.

  3. Set in a warm place to rise for 12-14 hours.

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 + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Hops + milktop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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
Starch that thickens the liquid and feeds the yeast as the starter rises.
Dried hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter against spoilage.
Liquid yeast
Carries the fermentation that makes the starter rise and develop flavour.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast only when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to hot liquid can stop fermentation before it starts. Cooling to lukewarm keeps the yeast alive and active.

“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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