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Yeast. Mrs. E. S. Cheesebrough

A homemade yeast made by boiling hops in water and mixing with mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, and fresh baker's yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Yeast. Mrs. E. S. Cheesebrough

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop water

  1. Place hops in a muslin bag.

  2. Boil the hops in 3 quarts of water for a few minutes.

Make the yeast

  1. In a bowl, combine hot mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, and salt.

  2. Pour the boiling hop water over the mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture through a colander.

  4. Add the warm mixture to the yeast.

  5. Stir well.

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

  7. Store the yeast in a cool place; it will keep for 3 to 4 weeks.

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. 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).

  4. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. 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

Hops
Provides bitterness and aroma that help flavour the liquid and inhibit spoilage.
Hot mashed potatoes
Supply starch and moisture that feed the yeast as it works.
Flour
Adds starch and body to the mixture, giving the yeast material to ferment.
Sugar
Provides quick food for the yeast, speeding up fermentation and rising.
Fresh baker's yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise.

The step that matters

Add the warm mixture to the yeast. If the mixture is too hot when added, it can kill the live yeast cells, so the batch will not rise. Letting it cool to warm first protects the culture.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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