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Baker's Yeast

A potato-based dough flavored with hops, brown sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Baker's Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hops

  1. Tie the hops in fine muslin.

  2. Boil the hops and water until reduced to 1 pint.

Make the yeast mixture

  1. Mash the potatoes finely.

  2. Add brown sugar, salt, and hop water to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Mix well and let it cool to lukewarm.

  4. Stir in the baker's yeast.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body that gives the dough a soft, moist texture.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and their flavour helps the dough taste distinctive.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast, supporting fermentation and rising, and adds a little sweetness.
Baker's yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that leavens the dough.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cool enough to be safe, yet warm enough to activate the yeast and start fermentation.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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