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Potato Yeast

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

Why it works: Sugar and flour 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

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes in 1 gallon of water until soft; mash through a sieve.

  2. Boil the hops in the same water, then strain into the mashed potatoes.

  3. Mix well, then add ½ cup of coarse sea salt and ½ cup of sugar; stir until combined.

  4. Let the mixture cool completely, then add the yeast cake dissolved in a little hop water.

  5. After 2 days, stir well before using.

  6. To make bread, rub 1 tablespoon of lard into 1 quart of flour with a little salt.

  7. In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup of the yeast with 1 egg (if using) and 1 tablespoon of sugar; stir well.

  8. Pour this mixture into the quart of flour and work it with lukewarm water, gradually adding the remaining pint of flour.

  9. Knead until the dough is smooth but not too stiff.

  10. In the morning, shape the dough into rolls; if too soft, add more flour.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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