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Yeast That Will Not Sour

A yeast starter made by boiling hops, mixing with sugar, flour, potatoes, and salt, then allowing to ferment.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 That Will Not Sour

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the hops in the water for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the hops and pour the liquid into a jar with brown sugar.

  3. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  4. Let the mixture stand in a warm place until it ferments.

  5. Mash the boiled potatoes and add them to the mixture along with the salt.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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).

  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
Boiled in the water to flavour the liquid and add natural bitterness that helps preserve it.
Brown sugar
Provides sugar for yeast to feed on, driving fermentation and adding sweetness.
Flour
Supplies starch and proteins that thicken the mixture and feed the fermenting culture.
Potatoes
Add starch and body to the mixture, giving the starter substance and food for the culture.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand in a warm place until it ferments. Fermentation depends on temperature: too cold and the yeast works slowly or not at all, too hot and it can stress or kill the culture. A warm, steady spot lets the starter develop properly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, 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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