Name: Hop and Potato Yeast
Ingredients: 5 large potatoes; 1 quart water; large handful of common hops (or 1 square inch of pressed hops); 1 cup white sugar; 2 teaspoons ginger; 2 teaspoons salt; 2 cups common yeast (or 1 cup distillery yeast)

Why it works: Potato and ginger 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 ↓

Hop and Potato Yeast

Ingredients

5 large potatoes
1 quart water
large handful of common hops (or 1 square inch of pressed hops)
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons ginger
2 teaspoons salt
2 cups common yeast (or 1 cup distillery yeast)

Directions

Prepare the yeast

Peel and slice the potatoes.
Boil the potatoes in water with the hops tied in a muslin rag until soft.
Remove the hops and press the potatoes through a colander.

Add the yeast and store

Add sugar, ginger, salt, and yeast when the mixture is blood-warm.
Store the yeast in a stone or earthenware jar with a well-fitting plate on top.

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.

Potato + gingertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together992 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together14,054 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,032 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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 and body that the yeast feeds on, thickening the mixture.
Hops: Add bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the yeast starter.
White sugar: Feeds the yeast, driving fermentation and gas production.
Common yeast: Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the starter rise.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast at blood-warm. If the mixture is too hot, it can kill the yeast; if it is too cold, fermentation starts slowly. Blood-warm is roughly body temperature, which suits yeast activity.

Swap the potato

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

Mustardfits better
Capsicumfits better
Sweet potatofits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, sugar, ginger. 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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Hop and Potato Yeast