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Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling hops and potatoes, then mixing their liquids with flour, salt, 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 ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquids

  1. Boil the hops in a pan.

  2. Boil the potatoes in a separate pan.

Combine and ferment

  1. Strain the hops liquid while still boiling hot into a large bowl containing flour, salt, and sugar.

  2. Strain the potato liquid while still boiling hot into the same bowl.

  3. Add the yeast and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a jug.

  5. Set it 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 liquid.
Potatoes
Supply starch and sugars that feed the yeast.
All-purpose flour
Provides starch that the yeast can ferment and gives the mixture body.
Sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that fuels the yeast.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbon dioxide and flavour compounds.

The step that matters

Straining the liquids while boiling hot. The liquids must be hot enough to dissolve the sugar and starch into the bowl and to reduce the risk of unwanted microbes. Adding yeast only after the mixture has cooled enough keeps the yeast alive.

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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