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Yeast That Will Not Soue

A fermented yeast starter made with hops, water, sugar, flour, potatoes, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 That Will Not Soue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in the water for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain the hops.

  3. Pour the liquid into a jar.

Make the starter

  1. Add the brown sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Let the mixture stand in a warm place until it ferments.

Add the potatoes and salt

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the boiled potatoes.

  3. Add the mashed potatoes to the jar.

  4. Mix in the salt.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + potatotop 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps slow spoilage in the liquid.
Brown sugar
Provides sugar that the yeast feeds on, driving fermentation and adding sweetness.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and supplies starches and nutrients for the yeast to use.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, giving the starter nutrients and a thicker texture.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture ferment in a warm place. Yeast activity depends on temperature. Warmth speeds fermentation, while very high heat kills yeast and cold slows it so much that the starter may fail to rise or sour properly.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, 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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