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Potato Yeast

A fermented potato yeast starter made by mashing potatoes, adding water, sugar, and yeast, then allowing it to rise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

Why it works: Potato and coffee work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 167 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato mixture

  1. Cook and mash the potatoes.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the mashed potatoes and stir well.

  3. Add the sugar and let it stand for a few minutes.

  4. Pour in the cold water until it reaches 1 quart.

Ferment and store

  1. When lukewarm, stir in the yeast.

  2. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  3. Once well fermented, transfer it to a stone jug and cork tightly.

  4. 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. Potato + coffeetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together167 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  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 that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
Sugar
Gives the yeast a quick food source to drive fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the mixture rise and sour.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast only when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before the yeast goes in. Water that is too hot will stop fermentation, while cool water will slow it down.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, 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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