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Potato Yeast

A fermented potato-based dough made with flour, sugar, salt, boiling water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and wash the potatoes, then grate them into a bowl.

  2. Add flour, sugar, and salt to the bowl and stir well.

  3. Pour in boiling water, stirring until the mixture is thin like starch.

  4. If it doesn't thicken, use a double boiler to heat and stir until it does.

  5. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl and let it cool to lukewarm.

Make the starter

  1. Stir in the yeast, cover the bowl, and let it sit in a warm place until foamy.

  2. Once it rises, beat it well and pour into jars, letting it sit for 12 hours.

  3. Cover the jars 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.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body that thicken the mixture and feed the yeast.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces gas that makes the mixture rise and turn foamy.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it can ferment and become active.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the mixture and supplies nutrients for fermentation.

The step that matters

Cooling to lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in. Too hot and the fermentation will fail to start, leaving the mixture flat and not foamy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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