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Potato Yeast

A fermented beverage made from mashed potatoes, flour, sugar, water, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Potato Yeast

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 ↓

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mash

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them while hot.

  2. Add the flour and sugar to the mashed potatoes.

  3. Pour in the boiling water while stirring continuously, then add the cold water.

  4. Strain the mixture and add the yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Set the mixture aside to rise until light.

  2. Once risen, pour it into bottles, cork tightly, and store in a dark, 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch and body, which the yeast ferments into a lightly flavored drink.
Flour
Adds more starch for the yeast to work on and thickens the mixture slightly.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, driving fermentation and the carbonation that builds in the bottles.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing carbon dioxide that makes the mixture rise and fizz.

The step that matters

Corking the bottles tightly. Yeast keeps producing carbon dioxide after bottling. If the bottles are not sealed tightly, gas escapes or pressure builds unevenly, and bottles can burst when stored warm.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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