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Yeast and Fermentation

A fermented potato beverage made with hops, flour, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Yeast and Fermentation

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop infusion

  1. Peel the potatoes and boil them in cold water.

  2. Tie the hops in muslin and add to the boiling water with the potatoes.

Make the paste

  1. Once the potatoes are tender, remove them and mash them.

  2. Mix in the flour and sugar with the mashed potatoes.

  3. Gradually pour in the boiling hop infusion while stirring to form a smooth paste.

Ferment

  1. Let the mixture cool until lukewarm, then add the yeast.

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. 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
Provide starch and body that the yeast can work on, and bulk up the brew.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the brew.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, giving the beer its fizz.
Sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast.
Flour
Thickens the mashed potato into a paste and adds starches for the yeast to use.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only when the mixture is lukewarm. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to lukewarm before adding it. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation before it starts.

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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