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Dessert

Dry Yeast

A yeast-based cake made with potatoes, hops, and flour, then dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Dry Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Soak the yeast in tepid water.

  2. Boil the potatoes in ½ pint of water until soft, then mash them in the cooking water to a thick consistency.

  3. Boil the hops in 1 pint of water.

  4. Strain the hot hop water over 1 teacup of sifted flour.

  5. Stir in the mashed potatoes and let cool.

  6. Add the soaked yeast and mix well.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Stir in meal until the mixture is very stiff.

  2. Set aside until light, preferably overnight.

  3. Add more meal, then turn out onto a floured board and roll to ¼ inch thick.

  4. Cut into cakes with a biscuit cutter.

Dry the cakes

  1. Dry the cakes in a dark place, turning occasionally, avoiding sunlight.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Yeast
Ferments the dough, producing gas that makes it rise and become light.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, giving the dough body and a soft texture.
Hops
Add bitter, aromatic flavour and help preserve the dough.
Flour
Provides starch and structure that the dough builds on as it stiffens.

The step that matters

Set aside until light, preferably overnight. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment; underproofing leaves the dough dense, while the gas it produces is what lightens the cakes.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, hops, flour. 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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