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To Make Yeast

A method for preparing a yeast starter using flour, sugar, water, yeast, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

To Make Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Thicken 2 quarts of water with 3 tablespoons of fine flour and boil for 30 minutes.

  2. Sweeten with ½ pound of brown sugar and let it cool.

  3. Add 4 tablespoons of fresh yeast to the mixture in a jug and shake well.

  4. Let it stand for 1 day near the fire, uncovered.

Store and reuse

  1. Pour off the thin liquor on top, shake the remainder, and cork it for use.

  2. For the next batch, always use 4 tablespoons of the old ferment.

  3. Alternatively, boil 1 pound of potatoes until mashed, let cool slightly, and mix in 1 cup of yeast.

  4. This mixture will be ready in 2 to 3 hours and keeps well.

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. 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

Fine flour
Thickens the water into a body that the yeast can cling to and feed on.
Brown sugar
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast, helping it become active.
Fresh yeast
Supplies the live microorganisms that ferment the mixture and make it rise.
Potatoes
Adds starch and moisture that feed the yeast in the alternative version.

The step that matters

Let the cooled mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the boiled mixture must be cooled before fresh yeast is added. Adding it while hot can destroy the culture and stop fermentation.

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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