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A yeast starter made by boiling hops, mixing with grated potatoes, sugar, ginger, and brewer's yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and grate the potatoes.

  2. Boil the hops in 1 quart of water.

  3. Strain the hop water over the grated potatoes.

Make the starter

  1. Stir the mixture on the stove until it scalds.

  2. Remove from heat and add brown sugar and ginger.

  3. Let it cool, then add the brewer's yeast.

  4. Store in a half-gallon jug, corked and tied down, 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.

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 + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch that yeast can feed on, adding body and fermentable material to the starter.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the starter against unwanted microbes.
Brown sugar
Gives the yeast readily available sugar to feed on, speeding up fermentation.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing carbon dioxide that makes the starter active and leavening.

The step that matters

Let it cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must cool after scalding before the yeast goes in. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, ginger. 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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