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Another Recipe for Yeast

A method for producing yeast using potatoes, hops, flour, sugar, and old yeast.

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 ↓

Another Recipe for Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Wash the potatoes, leaving the skins on.

  2. Cut them into small pieces and boil with the water and hops until the potatoes are soft.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it cool to lukewarm.

  4. Mix in the flour, sugar, and old yeast.

  5. Cover and keep in a warm place for at least 12 hours.

Bottle and keep

  1. Bottle the yeast; it will be ready for use in a day or two.

  2. If the yeast becomes dull, stir in a little brown sugar and warm water to assist fermentation.

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. Flour + potatotop 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. Hops + potatotop 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

Old yeast
Provides the living cultures that ferment the mixture and raise it.
Potatoes
Supply starch and nutrients that feed the yeast as it grows.
Flour
Adds starch and body, giving the yeast more material to feed on.
Sugar
Provides quick sugars that the yeast converts during fermentation.

The step that matters

Keeping the mixture warm while it ferments. Yeast activity depends on temperature; a warm place helps it multiply and ferment steadily, while a cold spot slows or stalls the process. Cooling to lukewarm before adding yeast also avoids killing the cultures with heat.

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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