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Baking Yeast to Make

A fermented mixture of mashed potatoes, molasses, water, wheat flour, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 235 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Baking Yeast to Make

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Boil the potatoes until soft, then peel and mash them.

  2. Add enough water to achieve the consistency of common yeast.

  3. While warm, mix in the molasses and yeast.

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

Add the hop liquid and ferment

  1. Boil the hops in 2 quarts of water, then strain.

  2. Pour the hot liquid over the wheat flour.

  3. When the mixture is warm (about milk warm), add the yeast.

  4. Let it ferment until ready for use, then bottle.

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 + wheattop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Molasses + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,429 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Molasses + wheattop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together702 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, giving the starter a thick, mashed texture and food for the yeast.
Molasses
Supplies sugars that feed the yeast, adding sweetness and a dark flavour.
Yeast
Ferments sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol, driving the starter's rise and flavour.
Wheat flour
Adds starch and proteins that give the starter body and more material for fermentation.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when the mixture is only milk warm. Yeast cells are killed by high heat, so adding it to a mixture that is too hot will stop fermentation. Waiting until the liquid is only lukewarm keeps the yeast alive and active.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, wheat, 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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