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Liquid Yeast

A method for producing liquid yeast using potatoes, hops, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Liquid Yeast

4 loaves of bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them with the flour.

  2. Boil the hops in the water, strain, and pour the liquid over the mashed potatoes and flour.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the yeast.

  4. Once the mixture has risen, stir in the salt and sugar.

Store and use

  1. Bottle the yeast and store it in a cool place.

  2. Use ½ cup of this yeast for 4 loaves of bread.

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).

  4. Flour + hopstop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma while helping preserve the liquid.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing carbon dioxide that makes it rise.
Sugar
Gives the yeast an easily used food source for fermentation.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cool enough that it will not destroy the yeast cells before fermentation begins.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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