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Good Yeast

A yeast starter made by fermenting grated potatoes in hop‑infused water with sugar and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Grate the potatoes.

  2. Boil the water with the hops for a few minutes.

  3. Strain the hot hop water over the grated potatoes, stirring until thickened.

  4. Add the sugar and salt, then let the mixture cool.

  5. Once cool, stir in the yeast.

  6. Let it stand until a thick foam rises on top.

Use

  1. Use 1 coffee cup of yeast for 6 loaves of bread.

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 + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raw potatoes
Grated potatoes supply starch and body to the starter, giving it a thick texture.
Hops
Hop water adds bitterness and aroma and helps preserve the starter.
Sugar
Sugar gives the yeast food to feed on, helping it grow and foam.
Yeast
Yeast is the living culture that ferments the mixture and makes it rise.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Hot liquid kills yeast cells, so the mixture must be cool before the yeast is stirred in to keep it active.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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