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Good Yeast

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

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 ↓

Good Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the starter

  1. Boil hops in water until done.

  2. Boil potatoes until soft.

  3. Mash the potatoes smooth with flour.

  4. Strain the hop water and pour it into the potato mixture, stirring until it forms a thin batter.

  5. Add hot water if the batter is too thick.

  6. Let the mixture cool until it is slightly warmer than milk.

  7. Add the brewer's yeast.

Rest and store

  1. Let it stand in a warm place for 8 to 10 hours.

  2. After resting, mix in salt and sugar well.

  3. Store in a stone jar or jug 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. 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

Potatoes
Break down into a starchy base that thickens the batter and feeds the yeast.
Flour
Adds starch to the potato mixture, giving the batter body and substance.
Brewer's yeast
Ferments the sugars in the batter, producing gas that makes the starter rise and bubble.
Sugar
Provides food for the yeast, speeding fermentation and adding a little sweetness.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool until slightly warmer than milk. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to a mixture that is still hot can stop fermentation. Cooling to lukewarm lets the yeast activate and grow steadily.

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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