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Yeast Cakes

A yeast-leavened cake made from boiled potatoes, hop tea, flour, sugar, ginger, and cornmeal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Yeast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Boil the potatoes in the hop tea until soft.

  2. Mash the potatoes finely and let them cool to lukewarm.

  3. Add the flour, sugar, ginger, and yeast to the mashed potatoes.

  4. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  5. Once light, stir in enough corn meal to make a thick batter.

  6. Let it rise overnight.

Shape and dry

  1. Mould the mixture and cut it into small cakes.

  2. Lay the cakes out to dry.

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 + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Tea + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together216 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Potato + teatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together412 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Tea + corntop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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, giving the cakes a soft, moist crumb.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the mixture rise and turn light.
Flour
Adds starch and structure that helps the batter hold its shape.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, speeding fermentation and adding a touch of sweetness.
Hop tea
Liquid base that adds bitterness and aroma while cooking the potatoes.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until light before adding corn meal. Yeast needs time and warmth to build gas and structure. Adding corn meal too early can stop the rise, leaving dense cakes.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tea, flour, sugar, ginger, corn. 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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