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Preserve

Yeast

A potato-based yeast starter for brewing, made with hops, water, sugar, ginger, and brewer's yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and ginger work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and grate the potatoes.

  2. Boil the hops in 1 quart of water, then strain the liquid over the grated potatoes.

  3. Stir the mixture on the stove until it scalds, then remove from heat.

Cool and add yeast

  1. Add the brown sugar and ginger, and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, add the brewer's yeast (or hop/cake yeast).

Store

  1. Transfer the mixture to a half-gallon jug, cork it, and tie it down.

  2. Store in a cool place; it will keep for two months.

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 + gingertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Supply starch that the yeast feeds on, adding body and nutrients to the starter.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and their compounds help slow spoilage by unwanted microbes.
Brown sugar
Provides quick-digesting sugar that feeds the yeast and drives fermentation.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing the gas and flavor that make the starter active.
Ginger
Adds a warm, spicy aroma and flavor to the starter.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only after the mixture has cooled. Scalding heat kills yeast cells. Adding yeast to a hot mixture would stop fermentation before it starts, so the mixture must cool first.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, ginger. 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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