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Baking

Self-Working Yeast

A method to produce yeast using potatoes, hops, flour, sugar, and salt.

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 ↓

Self-Working Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Tie the hops in a coarse muslin bag and boil in 4 quarts of water for 1 hour.

  2. Let the water cool to lukewarm before removing the bag.

Make the starter

  1. Wet the flour with the hop liquid gradually, making a smooth paste.

  2. Add the sugar and salt, and beat the batter for 3 minutes before adding the rest of the hop liquid.

  3. Cover the bowl with a thin cloth and let it sit for 2 days in a warm closet.

Finish and store

  1. On the third day, peel, boil, and mash the potatoes until smooth.

  2. Gradually stir in the thickened hop liquid and let it stand for 12 more hours, stirring often.

  3. Bottle or store in freshly scalded, sweet corked jars.

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. 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

Hops
Provide bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid for fermentation.
Flour
Forms the thick batter that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
White sugar
Feeds the yeast so it can produce gas and alcohol during fermentation.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture to the batter, giving the yeast more material to work on.

The step that matters

Letting the starter sit for 2 days in a warm closet. Yeast activity depends on warmth and time. Too cool and fermentation stalls; the batter needs steady warmth to bubble and rise before the potatoes are added.

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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