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Bread

Ever-keady Yeast

A yeast mixture made from boiled potatoes, flour, and dry yeast, left to ferment for 24 hours for bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Ever-keady Yeast

4 loaves of bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Peel and grate the potatoes quickly.

  2. Pour boiling water over the grated potatoes until it thickens like starch.

  3. Let the mixture cool for a few moments, then stir in flour to thicken.

  4. When the water is warm, dissolve 1-2 cakes of dry yeast in 1 cup of water and add it.

  5. Make the sponge either at bedtime or early in the morning.

  6. Let the mixture stand for 24 hours.

Store and use

  1. Use 1 pint of this yeast mixture with 4 pints of water for 4 loaves of bread.

  2. Store in a cool place for up to 2 weeks.

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. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and bread barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,383 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Grated potato thickens the liquid and gives the sponge body and a starchy base for fermentation.
Flour
Stirred in to thicken the mixture, adding structure and body to the sponge.
Dry yeast
Ferments the mixture, producing gas that makes the bread rise.

The step that matters

Pour boiling water over the grated potatoes until it thickens like starch. Boiling water gelatinises the potato starch, which thickens the mixture; if the water is not hot enough, the starch will not set properly and the sponge will be thin.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, bread. 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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