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Dessert

Self-made Yeast

A method for producing yeast using hops, water, salt, sugar, flour, and mashed potatoes.

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 ↓

Self-made Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil hops in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the hop-water into a crock and let it cool to milk-warm.

  3. Add salt and brown sugar to the hop-water.

  4. Mix flour with some hop-water and stir into the liquid in the crock.

  5. Let it stand for 2 days.

Add potatoes and ferment

  1. Boil and mash potatoes, then add to the liquid.

  2. Let it stand for 24 hours.

  3. Strain and transfer yeast to stone jugs.

  4. For 2-3 days, do not cork the bottles; shake or stir the yeast and keep it warm.

  5. After 2-3 days, cork and store in a cool place.

  6. It will be ready for use in 2 weeks.

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
Provides bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the starter against spoilage.
Potatoes
Supply starch that feeds the yeast during fermentation.
Brown sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that the yeast consumes to grow and become active.
Flour
Adds starch and nutrients that help the yeast multiply during the standing periods.

The step that matters

Let the yeast cool to milk-warm before adding flour. Yeast is sensitive to heat. If the hop-water is too hot when flour and liquid are added, the yeast cells can be killed, so the starter will fail to ferment. Cooling to milk-warm keeps the yeast alive and active.

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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