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Home Made Yeast

A liquid mixture of potato, flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and water used to raise dough.

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 ↓

Home Made Yeast

2 quarts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato water

  1. Peel and wash the potato, then boil it in sufficient water until soft.

  2. Remove the potato and place it in a bowl, letting the water cool.

  3. Thoroughly wash the potato, then add flour and mix well.

Mix the yeast

  1. Add sugar and salt, and mix again.

  2. Pour in the cooled water from boiling the potato and mix.

  3. Dissolve the yeast cake in about ½ cup of water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Add enough water to make a total of 2 quarts.

  5. Ensure the mixture is blood warm in cold weather and lukewarm in warm weather.

  6. Let the yeast stand for 9 to 12 hours until ready to use.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potato
Starch and moisture from the potato feed the yeast and give the starter body.
Flour
Provides starch that the yeast ferments, thickening the starter and supplying food for growth.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast as a quick fuel source, driving fermentation and gas production.
Yeast cake
Live yeast cells ferment the sugars and starches, producing carbon dioxide that leavens the bread.

The step that matters

Keeping the mixture at the right temperature. Yeast works best when warm but is killed by excessive heat. Blood-warm or lukewarm liquid lets the yeast become active without being destroyed, so the starter ferments steadily over the standing period.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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