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Connecticut Yeast

A yeast starter made by boiling hops and potatoes, then fermenting with flour, sugar, and salt.

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 ↓

Connecticut Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop water

  1. Boil hops in 2 quarts of water with the peeled potatoes.

  2. Once done, sift the potatoes.

Make and store the starter

  1. In a pan, combine sifted potatoes, flour, sugar, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Pour the boiling hop water over the mixture.

  3. When cool, add enough yeast to ferment well.

  4. Transfer to a jug, cork tightly, and 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. 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. 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

Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma, and its acids help keep the starter from spoiling.
Potatoes
Supply starch that the yeast can work on, adding body to the starter.
Flour
Adds more starch and thickens the mixture, giving the yeast more food.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, so it produces carbon dioxide and alcohol during fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing carbon dioxide and alcohol that drive the starter.

The step that matters

When cool, add enough yeast to ferment well.. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cooled before it is added. Adding yeast to boiling liquid would stop fermentation before it starts.

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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