Name: Yeast for Bread
Ingredients: 10-12 raw potatoes; ¾ cup flour; ¾ cup sugar; 1 good pinch of hops

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 for Bread

Ingredients

10-12 raw potatoes
¾ cup flour
¾ cup sugar
1 good pinch of hops

Directions

Grate the raw potatoes in a colander and let the water drip off.
Add the flour and sugar to the potatoes.
Boil the hops in water for 20 minutes, then pour over the potato mixture.

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.

Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,355 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
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: Provide starch and natural sugars that feed the yeast as the starter ferments.
Flour: Adds starch that thickens the mixture and gives the yeast more food to work on.
Sugar: Feeds the wild yeast and speeds up fermentation in the starter.
Hops: Contribute bitterness and aroma, and their natural compounds help preserve the starter.