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Hop-yeast

A yeast mixture made with hops, potatoes, flour, salt, sugar, and fresh yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Hop-yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop water

  1. Steep the hops in a porcelain or bright tin kettle.

Make the potato base

  1. Boil the sliced potatoes in 2 quarts of water until very soft, then mash until smooth.

  2. Prepare a smooth paste with 1 pint of flour and pour in the hot potato water, stirring continuously.

  3. Boil the mixture for a few minutes while stirring, then add the hop water, mashed potatoes, salt, and sugar.

Ferment and store

  1. Let the mixture cool until milk warm, then stir in 1 cup of fresh yeast.

  2. Allow it to rise in a warm place for 12 hours.

  3. Transfer to a well-cleaned, air-tight vessel and store in the cellar.

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

Fresh hops
Steeped in water to add bitter and aromatic flavour to the liquid.
Potatoes
Mashed into the liquid to add body and starch that feeds the fermentation.
Flour
Cooked into a paste with the potato water to thicken the mixture and add starch.
White sugar
Provides food for the yeast, helping it become active and produce gas.
Fresh yeast
Ferments the sugars and starch, causing the mixture to rise and turn lively.

The step that matters

Cool until milk warm before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must cool to about lukewarm before the yeast is stirred in. If it is still hot, the yeast may not activate and the mixture will fail to rise.

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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