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Liquid Yeast

A liquid yeast starter made by soaking a yeast cake in potato water and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and potato 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 ↓

Liquid Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Soak the yeast cake overnight.

  2. Strain off the water.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 pint of lukewarm potato water.

  4. Let the mixture rise until foam appears on top.

Portion and feed

  1. Take 1 cup of this yeast.

  2. Add enough warm water for your bread baking.

  3. Reserve the remaining yeast for future use.

  4. Save 1 pint of potato water.

  5. Stir the saved potato water lukewarm with 2 tablespoons of sugar into the leftover starter.

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 + potatotop 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

Yeast cake
Live yeast that ferments the sugar, producing gas that lightens the bread.
Sugar
Food for the yeast, speeding fermentation and the foam that signals activity.
Potato water
Warm liquid that wets the yeast and supplies nutrients for fermentation.

The step that matters

Let the mixture rise until foam appears on top.. Foam on the surface shows the yeast is active and fermenting. Water that is too hot can kill yeast, and water that is too cold slows it, so the starter may fail to rise or may rise too slowly.

“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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