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Yeast That Will Not Sour

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

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

Make the hop liquid

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

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

Ferment the starter

  1. Stir in the flour until smooth.

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

  3. Add the mashed potatoes and salt yeast, and mix 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. 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
Adds bitterness and helps discourage unwanted souring bacteria in the liquid.
Brown sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and builds flavour.
Flour
Supplies starch that feeds the fermentation and thickens the mixture into a smooth batter.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, giving the starter extra food for the yeast.
Salt yeast
Drives fermentation, producing gas that makes the starter rise and become active.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture stand in a warm place until it ferments. Yeast works best at a gentle warm temperature, and it needs to ferment before souring bacteria take over. Too hot or left too long, the mixture can turn sour rather than fermenting cleanly, so check it as it bubbles.

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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