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Buttebmilk Yeast

Yeast produced by fermenting buttermilk, hops, and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Buttermilk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Buttebmilk Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the starter

  1. In a large bowl, combine 1 quart of buttermilk, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and 2 quarts of meal.

  2. Add ½ cup of hop yeast and let the mixture rise for 8 hours.

  3. Stir in another quart of meal, then shape into thin small cakes and dry them in the sun.

Make the yeast

  1. For the yeast, boil 6 Irish potatoes and a handful of hops in ½ gallon of water until cooked.

  2. Mash the potatoes, strain the hop tea, and mix it with the mashed potatoes.

  3. Thicken the mixture with ½ pint of flour, return to the kettle, and bring to a boil.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt and mix in ½ pint of yeast.

  5. Store the yeast in a cool place; it will keep for one week.

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. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Buttermilk + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + potatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together153 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Buttermilk
Provides acidity that works with the meal and yeast to give the cakes a tangy flavour.
Meal
Forms the bulk of the cakes, giving them their structure once dried.
Hop yeast
Acts as the leavening agent that makes the mixture rise during the eight-hour rest.
Irish potatoes
Mashed into the yeast mixture, adding starch and body to the thickened liquid.
Flour
Thickens the yeast mixture so it holds together as it returns to the boil.

The step that matters

Thickening and boiling the yeast mixture. Flour must be stirred in evenly before the mixture returns to a boil, otherwise it can clump and the thickening will be uneven. Boiling also gelatinises the starch so the mixture sets properly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against buttermilk, sugar, hops, flour. 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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