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Dessert

Making Dry Yeast

A method for making dry yeast cakes from hops, potatoes, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 finely.

  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 cakes

  1. Roll the mixture to about ¼ inch thick and cut into 4‑inch squares.

  2. Lay the squares on a bright sunny sheet to dry, turning them twice a day until completely dry.

  3. 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 and set in a warm place until it rises.

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 froth and rise.
Potatoes
Provide starch and body, giving the mixture a thick, pasty texture.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid brew.
Corn meal
Stiffens the mixture so it can be rolled out and cut into cakes.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, giving it fuel to become active when reactivated.

The step that matters

Drying the cakes completely. If the squares stay moist, the yeast can keep living and spoil or lose strength in storage. Thin cakes turned often in sun dry evenly, which keeps the yeast stable for later use.

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.

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