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Liquid Yeast

A liquid yeast starter made by boiling potatoes and hops, then mixing with salt, sugar, flour, and old yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Liquid Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mash

  1. Boil the potatoes until done.

  2. Boil the hops in ½ cup of water.

  3. Mash the potatoes and add the coarse sea salt, brown sugar, and flour.

  4. Strain the hop water into the potato mixture and let it cool.

Ferment

  1. Pour in ½ cup of old yeast and transfer to a jug.

  2. Set the jug in a warm place until it sings, indicating it's 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. 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. Potato + hopstop 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
Supply starch that the yeast can feed on, giving the starter body.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma, and their water flavours the starter.
Brown sugar
Provides quick-energy sugar that feeds the yeast and adds a little sweetness.
Flour
Adds more starch for the yeast to consume and thickens the mash slightly.
Old yeast
Drives fermentation, producing gas that makes the starter rise and become active.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so adding it to hot hop water or mash can stop fermentation before it starts. The mixture should be cool to the touch before the yeast goes in.

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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