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Dry Yeast

A method for making dry yeast using potatoes, hops, flour, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dry Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop and potato liquids

  1. Boil the potatoes in 1 quart of water until done.

  2. Tie the hops in a bag and boil in another quart of water until the strength is extracted.

  3. Scald the flour with the hop water and cool it.

  4. Thin the mixture with the potato water until lukewarm.

Make the yeast

  1. Add enough good yeast to start it and let it rise until light.

  2. Beat down the mixture and let it rise again.

  3. Mix in enough cornmeal to form pieces the size of hickory nuts.

Dry and store

  1. Spread the cornmeal to dry in the wind, avoiding sunlight and fire.

  2. Once thoroughly dry, place it in a bag and hang in a cool, dry 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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Their cooking water thins the mixture and supplies starch that feeds the yeast.
Hops
Their boiled extract adds bitterness and aroma and helps preserve the yeast.
Flour
Scalding and cooling it forms the base that the yeast grows and rises in.
Yeast (in the method)
Fermentation in the mixture makes it rise and gives the final product its leavening power.
Cornmeal
Forms the mixture into dry pieces that can be stored and later reused as yeast.

The step that matters

Thinning to lukewarm before adding yeast. If the liquid is too hot, it can kill the yeast; if it is too cool, fermentation starts slowly. Lukewarm liquid lets the yeast grow steadily.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour. 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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