Skip to main content
Dessert

Making Dry Yeast

A process for making dry yeast cakes from hops, potatoes, and fresh yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Making Dry Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the yeast mixture

  1. Boil the hops in a pailful of water for one hour.

  2. Boil the potatoes until soft, then mash them fine.

  3. Strain the water from the hops onto the mashed potatoes.

  4. Add the salt and stir in enough flour to make a thin batter.

  5. Let the mixture cool until it is comfortable to touch.

  6. Stir in the fresh yeast and set aside to rise for six to eight hours until frothy.

  7. Stir in sifted corn meal until thick enough to roll out.

Dry the yeast

  1. Roll the mixture to about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Cut the rolled mixture into squares about four inches.

  3. Lay the squares in a sunny spot to dry, turning them twice a day until completely dry.

  4. Pack the dried yeast cakes away for storage.

Use the yeast

  1. To use, take a cake, mix with ½ pint lukewarm water, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 1 teaspoon salt.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make a thin batter.

  3. Let it rise 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.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing gas that makes it rise and turn frothy.
Potatoes
Supply starch and body, thickening the batter so it can be rolled out.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid used to make the mixture.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, helping it become active and rise.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until comfortable to touch before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cooled before the fresh yeast is stirred in; otherwise it will not ferment and rise.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, corn, 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.

More dry yeast recipes

Bread 3 See all 12 →

You might also like

Deep-Fried Potato BallsDeep-Fried Potato Balls119 recipesCorn CakeCorn Cake90 recipesCorn Starch CakeCorn Starch Cake89 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes