Name: Potato Yeast
Ingredients: 1 dozen large, mealy boiled potatoes; 1 large tablespoon of white flour; a little salt; 1 teacup of baker's yeast

Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

1 dozen large, mealy boiled potatoes
1 large tablespoon of white flour
a little salt
1 teacup of baker's yeast

Directions

Make the dough

Mash the boiled potatoes smoothly.
Mix in the white flour and a little salt.
Stir in the baker's yeast to form a batter.

Store

Once it has risen, bottle it tightly and store in a cool place.

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.

Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 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: Provide starch and moisture that give the dough a soft, moist body.
White flour: Adds starch and body so the mixture thickens into a workable batter.
Baker's yeast: Ferments sugars to produce gas, which makes the batter rise.

“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.