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Yeast. Mrs. E. S. Chesebrough

A yeast mixture made with hops, mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Yeast. Mrs. E. S. Chesebrough

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop water

  1. Boil hops in water for a few minutes in a muslin bag.

Make the yeast

  1. In a bowl, combine hot mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, and salt.

  2. Pour the boiling hop water over the mixture and strain through a colander.

  3. Add warm yeast and set in a warm place to rise.

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. 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma to the liquid, flavoring the finished yeast.
Mashed potatoes
Provide starch and moisture, giving the mixture body and food for the yeast.
Flour
Adds starch and body, thickening the mixture so it holds together.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, helping it become active and begin to rise.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and produces carbon dioxide, which makes the mixture rise.

The step that matters

Add warm yeast and set in a warm place to rise. Yeast works best at warm temperatures. If the liquid is too hot, it can kill the yeast, and if it is too cold, fermentation slows and the mixture may not rise.

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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Starter 138Bread 83Potato Starter 58Potato 56Hop 46Cake 43 See all 12 →

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