Skip to main content
Main

Potato Yeast

A potato-based yeast mixture that ferments for 18 hours to produce a dough starter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
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

Make the potato base

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the potatoes in the water they were boiled in.

  3. Pour the mashed potatoes over the flour, salt, and sugar.

  4. Add the boiling water and mix well.

Add the yeast and rise

  1. Stir in the cold water.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in ½ cup lukewarm water and mix it with the potato mixture.

  3. Let the mixture sit in a warm place for about 18 hours.

  4. Store in a cool place and use as needed.

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
Starch and moisture that give the dough a soft, tender body.
Flour
Provides the starch and protein that form the body of the dough.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast so it becomes active and produces gas.
Yeast
Produces carbon dioxide during fermentation, which makes the dough rise.

The step that matters

Let the mixture sit in a warm place for about 18 hours. Yeast needs warmth and time to ferment. Too cool and the dough barely rises; too hot and the yeast can be killed or the dough can sour. Keeping the warmth steady lets the yeast build the gas that gives the dough its lift.

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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes