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Potato Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling and mashing potatoes, adding sugar, flour, salt, water, and yeast, then fermenting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes in the morning.

  2. Add sugar, flour, and salt, and stir well.

  3. Pour in boiling water and stir, then add cold water and stir again.

  4. Add the yeast and place in a warm area.

Rise and store

  1. When it rises, stir it down several times during the day.

  2. At night, strain and transfer to a jug.

  3. Store in a cool place; it will last a week.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. 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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Supply starch and moisture that feed the yeast and give the starter body.
Sugar
Provides quick food for the yeast, speeding up fermentation and rising.
Flour
Adds starches and proteins for the yeast to ferment, thickening the starter.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, releasing gas that makes the starter rise.

The step that matters

Add the yeast and place in a warm area. Yeast is alive and works best at moderate warmth. Too hot and it dies, so the starter will not rise; too cold and fermentation is very slow.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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