Skip to main content
Starter

Raw Potato Yeast

A yeast starter made by fermenting grated raw potatoes with flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Raw Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Pare the potatoes.

  2. Cover the potatoes with cold water.

  3. In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, and salt.

  4. Grate the potatoes quickly.

  5. Mix the grated potatoes with the flour using a wooden or silver spoon.

  6. Pour about 1 pint of boiling water over the grater to rinse off the potato into the bowl.

  7. Mix the water thoroughly with the potato and flour.

  8. Add more boiling water to achieve a thin starch consistency.

Cook and strain

  1. Pour the mixture into a double boiler or granite pan.

  2. Bring it to a boil.

  3. Stir to prevent sticking.

  4. Strain the mixture through a squash strainer.

  5. Let it cool.

Add yeast and rise

  1. When lukewarm, add the yeast.

  2. Cover.

  3. Keep in a warm place until light and foamy.

  4. Beat it well several times to strengthen it.

  5. At night or when well risen, store it in a cool place in wide-mouthed earthen or glass jars.

  6. Reserve a cup or more in a jar by itself for the next yeast making.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 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 thickens the liquid and feeds the yeast.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the mixture into a thin starch base.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, helping it become light and foamy.
Yeast
Ferments the starch and sugars, causing the mixture to rise and turn foamy.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only when lukewarm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before adding it. Adding yeast to boiling or hot liquid would stop fermentation and the mixture would fail to rise.

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.

More potato yeast recipes

Starter 58Bread 21Dough 14 See all 56 →

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes