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Yeast. Mrs. E. S. Cheesebrough

A homemade yeast mixture made with hops, mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Yeast. Mrs. E. S. Cheesebrough

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in a muslin bag in 3 quarts of water for a few minutes.

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the hot mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, and salt.

  2. Pour the boiling hop water over the mixture and strain through a colander.

Start the yeast

  1. Add the warm mixture to the yeast and stir well.

  2. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

Store

  1. This yeast will keep for 3-4 weeks if stored in a cool 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. 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. 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 yeast starter.
Hot mashed potatoes
Supply starch and moisture that feed the yeast as it grows.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the mixture and gives the yeast more food.
Sugar
Provides quick food for the yeast, speeding up its activity.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.

The step that matters

Add the warm mixture to the yeast. If the liquid is too hot, it can kill the yeast; if too cool, fermentation slows. The mixture should feel warm to the touch, not hot, so the live yeast cells can start working.

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.

More yeast recipes

Starter 138Bread 83Potato Starter 58Potato 56Hop 46Cake 43 See all 12 →

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