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Drink

Potato Yeast Without Flour

A fermented beverage made from boiled potatoes, hops, yeast, sugar, salt, and ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and potato work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 992 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Potato Yeast Without Flour

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Boil the potatoes in 3 quarts of water.

  2. Pass the boiled potatoes through a colander with the water.

  3. Boil the hops in 1 quart of water for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the hop water over the potatoes.

  5. Add the sugar, salt, and ginger to the potato mixture.

  6. Check that the total volume is 5 quarts.

  7. Add tepid water if needed.

Ferment

  1. Stir in the yeast that has been mixed smoothly after soaking.

  2. Keep the mixture in a warm place until bubbles form on the surface.

  3. Store the mixture in a stone crock.

  4. Cover the crock.

  5. Stir from the bottom when using.

  6. Keep the beverage in a dry, cool place for months.

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. Ginger + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Ginger + hopstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Sugar + potatotop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch that the yeast can work on, forming the body of the drink.
Yeast
Ferments sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol, making the drink fizzy and alcoholic.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during fermentation and gives the drink its sweetness.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the drink.

The step that matters

Keep the mixture warm until bubbles form. Yeast activity depends on warmth; if the mixture is too cold, fermentation stalls, and if it is too hot, the yeast can be harmed. Bubbles show that fermentation has started.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, ginger, hops):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, ginger, hops. 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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