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Drink

Dutch Yeast

A yeast-based beverage made with hops, mashed potatoes, flour, and Indian meal, sweetened with sugar and salted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Dutch Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop liquor

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water with a handful of hops for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the hop liquor over the mashed potatoes.

Make the batter

  1. Add 1 teacup of Indian meal and 1 teacup of flour.

  2. Boil for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Let it cool until milk warm.

  4. Stir in 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of salt, and ½ pint of yeast.

Bottle

  1. Bottle it tightly the next day.

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. 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 to the hop liquor.
Potatoes
Provide starch and body to the liquid mixture.
Indian meal
Thickens the mixture and adds body as it boils.
Flour
Adds starch that thickens the mixture as it boils.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing carbonation and flavor.

The step that matters

Let it cool until milk warm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by excessive heat. Cooling the mixture to milk warm lets the yeast stay active so it can ferment the sugars and carbonate the liquid.

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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