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Self-made Yeast

A method for producing yeast using hops, water, salt, sugar, flour, and 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 ↓

Self-made Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil hops in water for about 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the hop water into a crock.

  3. Let the hop water cool to milk-warm.

  4. Add salt and brown sugar to the hop water.

Build the starter

  1. Mix flour with some of the hop water until smooth, then stir the mixture into the liquid in the crock.

  2. Let the mixture stand for 2 days.

  3. Peel the potatoes and boil them.

  4. Mash the potatoes and add them to the liquid in the crock.

  5. Leave to stand for 24 hours.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Bottle and mature

  1. Transfer the yeast into stone jugs.

  2. Do not cork the jugs for 2-3 days.

  3. Shake or stir the yeast.

  4. Keep the yeast warm.

  5. Cork the jugs.

  6. Store the jugs in a cool place.

  7. Wait 2 weeks for the yeast to be ready for use.

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
Add bitter and aromatic flavour to the liquid and help preserve the starter.
Brown sugar
Feeds the yeast, providing fermentable sugar for it to convert into gas and alcohol.
Flour
Provides starch and nutrients that the wild yeast and bacteria feed on during fermentation.
Potatoes
Supply starch and nutrients that feed the yeast and add body to the starter.

The step that matters

Let the hop water cool to milk-warm before adding flour. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, while cold liquid slows fermentation. Milk-warm is warm enough to keep yeast active without harming it.

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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