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Unrivaled Yeast

A homemade yeast starter made from 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 ↓

Unrivaled Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquid

  1. Boil the hops in the water for 30 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool to the consistency of new milk.

Ferment the starter

  1. In an earthen bowl, combine the cooled liquid with the salt and brown sugar.

  2. Beat the flour with some of the liquid, then mix everything together well.

  3. Let the mixture stand for three days.

  4. Add the boiled and mashed potatoes, then let it stand for one more day.

  5. Strain and bottle the yeast, stirring frequently while it ferments.

  6. Keep the yeast near a fire during fermentation and in a cool place afterward.

  7. Shake the bottle well before using.

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
Adds bitterness and aroma, and helps preserve the liquid against spoilage.
Flour
Provides starch that feeds the fermenting yeast and thickens the mixture.
Brown sugar
Supplies sugar that yeast consumes during fermentation, producing carbon dioxide and alcohol.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, giving the yeast more food to ferment.

The step that matters

Let the liquid cool to the consistency of new milk before combining. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the wort must be cooled to a warm, milky thickness before the yeast-feeding ingredients are added and fermentation can begin safely.

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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