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Potato Yeast

A yeast mixture made by boiling and mashing potatoes, adding flour, sugar, and yeast, then cooling and storing.

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

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Boil the potatoes in 3 pints of water until very soft.

  2. Mash the potatoes finely.

  3. Add 1 pint of sifted flour and 1 cup of white sugar to the mashed potatoes.

Add yeast and store

  1. When the mixture is nearly cold, add a scant cup of yeast.

  2. Mix well, then cork it tightly and 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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
Their starch and water form the moist, starchy base that feeds the yeast.
Flour
Provides starch that the yeast can break down and ferment, giving the mixture body.
White sugar
Serves as food for the yeast, helping it become active and produce gas.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas and flavour in the mixture.

The step that matters

When the mixture is nearly cold, add a scant cup of yeast.. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a hot mixture can stop it from fermenting. Letting the mixture cool to nearly cold first keeps the yeast alive and active.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar. 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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