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Mrs. Scott’s Yeast

A yeast made from hops, water, salt, sugar, flour, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓

Mrs. Scott’s Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop tea

  1. Boil the hops in water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the liquid and let it cool to the warmth of new milk.

  3. Add salt and sugar to the cooled hop tea.

Make the yeast

  1. Mix flour with a little hop tea until smooth, then combine with the rest of the hop tea.

  2. Let the mixture stand until Wednesday.

  3. Boil and mash the potatoes, then stir them into the mixture.

  4. Strain the mixture and transfer it to jugs or bottles.

  5. Store in a cool place; it will keep for two months.

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. Sugar + flourtop 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. Sugar + potatotop 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
Provide bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the liquid as a natural flavouring agent.
All-purpose flour
Supplies starch and proteins that feed the fermentation and thicken the mixture slightly.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast organisms, driving fermentation and producing carbon dioxide.
Irish potatoes
Add starch and nutrients that feed fermentation and give the yeast body.

The step that matters

Let the mixture stand until Wednesday. Fermentation needs time to develop; stopping early leaves the yeast weak and under-risen. The cooled hop tea must be warm, not hot, so it does not kill the yeast cells.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, 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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