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Lightning Yeast

A quick yeast starter made from boiled potatoes, water, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Lightning Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the potatoes until fine.

  2. Pour the hot water over the mashed potatoes.

  3. Add the sugar and salt, stirring until smooth and creamy.

  4. Pour in the cold water and let the mixture cool to lukewarm.

  5. Add the yeast and mix well.

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 + 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

Boiled potatoes
Provide starch and body that gives the starter a thick, creamy base for the yeast.
Sugar
Gives the yeast an easily used food source to feed on and multiply.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starch, producing gas that leavens the starter and gives it activity.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. Adding it only once the mixture is lukewarm keeps the cells alive so they can ferment and raise the starter.

“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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