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A liquid yeast starter made by boiling hops and potatoes, then mixing with flour, salt, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar 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 ↓

Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the liquids

  1. Boil hops in a pan.

  2. Boil potatoes in a separate pan.

Mix and set

  1. Strain the hot hop liquid into a large bowl with flour, salt, and sugar.

  2. Strain the hot potato liquid into the same bowl.

  3. Add yeast and mix well.

  4. Pour the mixture into a jug and set it in a cool place.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + sugartop 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

Flour
Provides starch and body, giving the yeast material to feed on.
Yeast
Ferments sugars and starches, producing gas that leavens the starter.
Sugar
Gives the yeast a quick food source to start fermentation.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture that the yeast can break down and ferment.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and their compounds help slow spoilage microbes.

The step that matters

Add yeast and mix well. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the strained hop and potato liquids must have cooled enough before the yeast goes in. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, 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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