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Potato Yeast

A simple grated potato mash with flour, sugar, and salt, boiled in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift the flour, sugar, and salt into a large pan or preserving kettle.

  2. Pare the potatoes and place them in cold water to prevent discoloration.

Make the porridge

  1. Grate the potatoes into the sifted mixture and mix quickly with a silver or wooden spoon.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the 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.

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. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and bulk that thicken the porridge and feed the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, giving it fuel to ferment and produce gas.
All-purpose flour
Adds starch and body that help form a thick, smooth porridge.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling water over the mixture. Boiling water gelatinizes the starch in the flour and grated potatoes, thickening the mixture into a porridge. The mixture must then cool to a safe temperature before yeast or starter is added, since excessive heat can kill yeast.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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