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Home-made Yeast No. 1

A homemade yeast starter made from potatoes, sugar, salt, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Home-made Yeast No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Pare the potatoes and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Grate the potatoes and stir them into the boiling water.

Cook and cool

  1. Stir over heat for 5 minutes, then remove from heat.

  2. Add sugar and salt, then transfer to a stone jar or bowl and let cool until lukewarm.

Ferment and store

  1. Add the yeast, cover, and let ferment for 3-4 hours, stirring down when it rises.

  2. Transfer to a tightly covered jar or bottle and store in a very cold place, but not frozen.

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that breaks down into sugars and feeds the fermentation, adding body to the liquid.
Sugar
Food for the yeast, driving fermentation and adding sweetness.
Yeast
Live microorganisms that ferment the sugars and produce gas, causing the starter to rise.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until lukewarm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid. Cooling to lukewarm keeps the cells alive so they can ferment the sugars properly.

“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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