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Potato Yeast

A yeast-leavened dough made from grated potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, ginger, hops, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop water

  1. Boil hops in 2 quarts of water until reduced to 1 quart.

Make the dough

  1. Pour hot hop water over the grated potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, and ginger.

  2. Stir until thickened, then let cool.

  3. Add a small amount of yeast and mix well.

Rise

  1. Let rise overnight in a warm 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.

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

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

  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. Flour + gingertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 and moisture that give the bread body and a soft, moist crumb.
Flour
Adds structure as it thickens with the hot liquid, helping the dough hold together.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and browning.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the dough.
Hops
Contribute a bitter, aromatic flavour and help the dough's natural yeast activity.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. Letting the thickened mixture cool before adding yeast protects its ability to leaven the dough during the overnight rise.

Swap the potato

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

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

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