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Unfailing Yeast

A fermented yeast mixture made from hops, water, salt, sugar, flour, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Unfailing Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool to lukewarm.

  3. Add salt and sugar to the lukewarm liquid.

Make the starter

  1. Mix flour with some of the liquid until smooth.

  2. Combine all ingredients and let it stand for 2 days.

  3. Add boiled and mashed potatoes and let it stand for 1 more day.

  4. Strain the mixture and pour it into bottles.

  5. Do not cork the bottles until the yeast has finished working.

  6. Keep the mixture near a fire and stir frequently.

  7. Shake the bottle well before using.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Hops + potatotop 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the liquid.
Flour
Provides starch that feeds the yeast and thickens the mixture into a starter.
Sugar
Gives the yeast readily fermentable food to produce gas and activity.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture that the yeast can work on during standing.

The step that matters

Do not cork the bottles until the yeast has finished working. Fermentation releases carbon dioxide, which builds pressure. Corking too early can trap the gas and burst the bottles, so the bottles should stay open until fermentation slows.

Swap the potato

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

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

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