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Home-made Yeast

A homemade yeast starter made by boiling hops, potatoes, salt, and sugar, then adding yeast to ferment.

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 ↓

Home-made Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Tie the loose hops in a bit of muslin and boil in 2 quarts of water for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the hops and add the sliced potatoes; boil until soft.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt and ½ cup of brown sugar; scald these ingredients.

Ferment and store

  1. Let the mixture cool until lukewarm, then add sufficient yeast to make it rise.

  2. When it is light and stops bubbling, transfer it to a jug or covered jar.

  3. Store in a cool place; it will keep for 2 weeks in hot weather or 1 month in cold.

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).

  2. Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Loose hops
Provide bitterness and aroma that help preserve the liquid and flavour it.
Sliced potatoes
Release starch and sugars that feed the yeast as the mixture ferments.
Brown sugar
Provides food for the yeast, driving fermentation and rising.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that makes the mixture rise and bubble.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the liquid must be cooled to lukewarm before adding it. Adding yeast to a hot mixture can stop fermentation entirely.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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