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Dry Yeast

A dried cake made from boiled potatoes, hops, flour, yeast, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Dry Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Boil the potatoes and hops in 3 pints of water.

  2. Once done, remove the potatoes, mash them well, and add 1 pint of flour.

  3. Pour boiling water over the mixture and beat well.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 tablespoon of ginger, and ½ cup of sugar.

  5. When lukewarm, add 1 cup of good yeast and let it stand for 1-2 days, stirring frequently.

  6. Add white corn meal until thick enough to form cakes about ½ inch thick.

Dry and store

  1. Place the cakes to dry in the shade, ensuring good air circulation.

  2. Turn the cakes frequently and break them up to ensure even drying.

  3. Once thoroughly dried, store in a paper sack in a 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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Ginger + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Flour + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Mashed starch that binds the mixture into a dough that holds its shape as cakes.
Yeast
Ferments the mixture over 1-2 days, producing gas and flavour that give the cakes a lighter texture.
White corn meal
Stiffens the mixture so it can be shaped into cakes that hold together.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during standing and adds sweetness.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand with yeast. Yeast needs time and a moderately warm mix to ferment. Stirring frequently keeps the yeast evenly distributed so the cakes rise and taste consistent rather than dense in places.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, ginger, sugar, corn. 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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