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 ↓
To Make Dry Yeast for the Summer
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
When the soft yeast is light, add enough Indian meal to make a stiff dough.
Shape the dough into a roll and cut off cakes about ½ inch thick.
Make the yeast
To make the yeast, boil the sliced potatoes and hops in a bag in 1 gallon of water for 1 hour.
When cool, add 1 teacup of sugar, ¾ cup of coarse sea salt, and ½ cup of baker’s yeast.
Dry the cakes
Dry the cakes in moderately cool air on a frame covered with mosquito netting.
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.
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Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Soft yeast
- Leavens the dough so it rises and becomes light before shaping.
- Indian meal
- Provides the starch and structure that turns the mixture into a stiff dough.
- Large potatoes
- Supply starch that feeds the yeast and adds body to the liquid.
- Hops
- Add bitterness and aroma and help preserve the homemade yeast.
- Sugar
- Feeds the yeast, giving it fuel to grow and produce gas.
- Baker’s yeast
- Adds live cultures that ferment the liquid and drive rising.
The step that matters
Drying the cakes in moderately cool air. Air that is too warm can case the outside to crust and trap moisture inside, while the cakes need steady, gentle drying to dry through evenly and keep their shape and storage life.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, sugar):
- Mustardfits better
- Cucumberfits about as well
- Capsicumfits about as well
- 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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