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Good Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling water with hops, mixing with grated potatoes, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Boil 1 gallon of water with 3 handfuls of hops.

  2. Strain the hot mixture over the grated potatoes, stirring until it thickens like starch.

  3. Add 1 teacup of sugar and ½ cup of coarse sea salt.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then stir in 1 cup of good yeast.

Ferment and store

  1. Allow it to stand until a thick foam rises on top.

  2. Do not bottle too soon to prevent bursting.

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 + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 provides food for the yeast.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, driving fermentation and foam formation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starch, producing gas that raises the foam.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed or slowed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool enough for the yeast to survive and begin fermenting.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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