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Iiop Yeast

A yeast starter made from potatoes, hops, flour, sugar, and yeast.

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

Iiop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hops and potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes and place them with the hops in the muslin bag into 2 quarts of cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Cover and boil until the potatoes break apart.

  3. Remove the potatoes with a skimmer, leaving the water to boil.

Make the starter

  1. Mash the potatoes finely and add the flour and sugar.

  2. Moisten the mixture with the boiling water from the potatoes, stirring to a smooth paste.

  3. Set aside to cool; when lukewarm, add the lively yeast.

  4. Transfer to a large open dish to work and keep in a warm place until it stops bubbling.

  5. It is then ready to bottle for use.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. 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
Break down into starch and body that thickens the starter and feeds the yeast.
Flour
Adds starch and body, forming a paste that gives the yeast material to work on.
Sugar
Provides quick food for the yeast, driving fermentation and bubbling.
Lively yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the starter bubble and rise.
Hops
Contribute bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the starter.

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. Hot liquid would destroy the yeast and the starter would fail to bubble.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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.

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