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Dessert

Dry Yeast Cakes

A yeast-based cake made from potatoes, hops, flour, sugar, and cornmeal, dried after rising.

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 ↓

Dry Yeast Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Place the hops and sliced potatoes in a quart of water and boil until the potatoes are soft.

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and salt.

  3. Scald the flour mixture with the hop and potato water, mashing until smooth.

Make the dough

  1. Once cool, add 4 soaked yeast cakes and let it rise until lively.

  2. Stir in cornmeal until the mixture is stiff enough to cut into cakes.

Dry the cakes

  1. Dust a board with cornmeal and spread the cakes on it, turning frequently until dry.

  2. In warm weather, dry the cakes in the air, avoiding direct sunlight; in cold weather, dry them in a warm room near the stove.

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

Flour
Forms the body of the dough, and when scalded it thickens and sets the structure.
Yeast cakes (in the method)
Ferment the mixture so it rises and becomes light and lively.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture that help the dough hold together and stay soft.
Hops
Add a bitter, aromatic flavour and help preserve the liquid.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness to the cakes.

The step that matters

Scalding the flour mixture. Pouring the hot liquid over the flour and mashing it until smooth cooks the starch so it gelatinizes and thickens, and removes lumps. Under-heated or lumpy flour gives a dense, uneven dough.

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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