Yeast
Boil one quart of Irish potatoes in three quarts of water. When done, take out the potatoes, one by one, on a fork, peel and mash them fine, in a tray, with a large iron spoon, leaving the boiling water on the stove during the process. Throw in this water a handful of hops, which must scald, not boil, as it turns the tea very dark to let the hops boil.
Add to the mashed potatoes a heaping teacupful of powdered white sugar and half a teacupful of salt; then slowly stir in the strained hop tea, so that there will be no lumps. When milk-warm add a teacupful of yeast and pour into glass fruit jars, or large, clear glass bottles, to ferment, being careful not to close them tightly. Set in a warm place in winter, a cool one in summer. In six hours it will be ready for use, and at the end of that time the jar or bottle must be securely closed. Keep in a cold room in winter, and in the refrigerator in summer. This yeast will keep two weeks in winter and one week in summer. Bread made from it is always sweet.--Mrs. S. T.
This is a liquid bread yeast — a hop-and-potato starter of the kind a Virginia kitchen kept going from week to week. It works, but it depends on borrowing a cupful of live yeast from a previous batch, and on a few temperatures the original states only by feel.
- The hinge: scald, never boil the hopsBoiled hops draw more bitterness and tannin into the tea, which is likely what the author means by "dark." Keep the potato water hot but below a simmer, drop the hops in, and let them steep briefly before straining.
- "Milk-warm" means about 95-100FAdd the seed yeast only when the mixture has cooled to about blood heat. Yeast is stressed well above that and killed somewhere around 130-140F, and the mixture holds heat far longer than it feels like it should — check with a thermometer rather than a finger.
- A quart of potatoesMeasured as whole potatoes by volume, call it a pound and a half — three or four medium starchy potatoes. They are boiled in their skins and peeled hot, which is why the recipe has you fish them out one at a time on a fork.
- TeacupfulA nineteenth-century teacup is usually reckoned at somewhere between half and three-quarters of a modern cup, and contributors were inconsistent; a full cup of sugar will not hurt anything. The half teacupful of salt looks startling but need not be a seasoning error — at that concentration salt and sugar would help check spoilage organisms while the yeast works.
- Do not seal tight while it fermentsThe instruction "being careful not to close them tightly" is the safety line in this recipe. A fermenting starter in a sealed glass bottle builds real pressure and glass can fail. Cover loosely with cloth or set a lid on without screwing it down.
- The seed yeastThe teacupful of yeast means a cup of the previous batch of this same liquid yeast. Starting from nothing, a cup of active sourdough starter or a proofed packet of commercial yeast will get it going, though the fermentation character will differ.
- Six hours is a guide, not a ruleModern kitchens are warmer and steadier than an 1877 pantry. Watch for a good foam and a clean, beery smell rather than the clock, then chill it. Refrigerate throughout — a week to two weeks of keeping assumes cold storage, and any pink, orange or musty growth means discard the jar.
- Yield and useRoughly three quarts of liquid yeast. Recipes written for liquid yeast tend to call for something on the order of a cupful per large loaf; because the strength varies batch to batch, use it in a recipe written for liquid yeast and judge by how the dough rises rather than by timing.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1877), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions signed with initials like this one, appeared toward the end of an era when many households still made their own leaven, though bought yeast, salt-rising and other leavens were also in use. Hop-and-potato yeasts were one common American solution: the potato supplied starch and a soft medium, the sugar fed the culture, the hop tea contributed both bitterness the yeast tolerates and antibacterial resins that likely discouraged the souring bacteria which turned a starter sharp im of the claim behind "bread made from it is always sweet." Compressed cake yeast had been shown to American cooks at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia and spread quickly afterward, so recipes like this one document a practice already beginning to disappear from town kitchens even as the book went to press.