Why it works: Potato and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,355 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the hop water
Boil hops in 5 quarts of water for 1 hour.
Make the potato base
Peel and boil the potatoes until tender.
Drain the potatoes and mash them with 1 pound of flour.
Add some of the hop water to the potato mixture and rub it through a sieve.
Build and store the starter
Combine the remaining hop water and let it cool to lukewarm.
Stir in 1 pint of good yeast and let it sit overnight.
Bottle the yeast in a stone bottle for future use.
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.
-
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
-
Hops + potatotop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Potatoes
- Provide starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
- Flour
- Adds more starch to thicken the potato mixture and feed the yeast.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars in the mixture to make the starter active and leavening-ready.
- Hops
- Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the starter against spoilage.
The step that matters
Let the hop water cool to lukewarm before adding yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be lukewarm before the yeast is stirred in to stay active.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, flour):
- Mustardfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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.
More yeast starter recipes
You might also like
Potato Croquettes255 recipes
Potato Rolls78 recipes
Potato Chips53 recipes
Sweet Potato Croquettes53 recipesThe free Flavor Lab newsletter: one surprising pairing a week and the molecular reason it works, in 60 seconds. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
Prefer an account? Create a free account to save pairings and unlock the full chemistry.