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Peach-leaf Yeast

A yeast mixture made from boiled potatoes, peach leaves, water, flour, sugar, 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 peach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 71 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Peach-leaf Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquid and paste

  1. Boil the potatoes, peach tree leaves, and water in a porcelain kettle.

  2. Mix the flour with a little cold water to form a thick paste.

  3. Once the potatoes are done, mash them into the flour paste until smooth.

  4. Strain the water from the boiled potatoes into the paste, stirring well.

Add the sugar and yeast and rise

  1. Add the sugar while the mixture is hot, then add the yeast when it is lukewarm.

  2. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise, and bottle it the next day.

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 + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together71 recipes

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Peach + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,308 recipes

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

  5. Peach + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their starch and cooking water add body and thickness to the liquid.
Flour
Forms a thick paste whose starch thickens the mixture and feeds the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness to the finished liquid.
Brisk yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before adding it. Once it is warm enough, the yeast can become active and begin fermenting and raising the mixture.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against peach, 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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