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Bread

Yeast Meal

Yeast meal is a dry powder made from hops, potatoes, salt, yeast, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Yeast Meal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Cover the hops with enough water to make 1 pint when steeped and strained.

  2. Add the grated potatoes, salt, and yeast to the water and mix well.

  3. Let the mixture stand for 1 hour or until light.

  4. Add enough corn meal to make the mixture stiff.

Dry and store

  1. Set the mixture in the sun to dry, stirring often.

  2. When dry, roll it to a powder with a rolling pin.

  3. Store the powder in light-brown paper in a dry place.

  4. Use 1 tablespoon of yeast meal for every 2 loaves.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Hops + corntop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Hops + potatotop 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 that bind the mixture into a stiff, dryable dough.
Yeast
Ferments the mixture so it becomes light, and its activity is what leavens the bread it is used in.
Corn meal
Stiffens the mixture so it can be dried and rolled into a powder.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand for 1 hour or until light. Yeast needs time to multiply and produce gas; stopping too early leaves the mixture dense and weakens its leavening power later in the bread.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, corn):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Mustardfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, corn. 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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