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Soft Yeast. No. 1

A yeast starter made with hops, flour, potatoes, yeast, salt, and sugar.

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 ↓

Soft Yeast. No. 1

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil hops in 3 quarts of water until reduced to 3 pints.

  2. Strain and return to kettle.

Make the starter

  1. Mix 1 cup of flour with cold water until smooth.

  2. Stir in 6 boiled and mashed potatoes.

  3. Let mixture stand until lukewarm.

  4. Strain again and add 1 cup of yeast.

  5. Let it sit in a warm place until light.

  6. Add salt and sugar, then pour into a jar.

  7. Store in a cool place.

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. Flour + potatotop 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. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Hops + potatotop 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

Yeast
Ferments the starter, producing gas that makes it light and bubbly.
Potatoes
Supply starch that feeds the yeast and adds body to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the yeast starch to work on.
Sugar
Provides quick food for the yeast, speeding fermentation.

The step that matters

Let it sit in a warm place until light. Yeast works best in gentle warmth. Too cold and fermentation stalls; too hot and the yeast can die, so the starter may not rise.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, flour, 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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