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Potato Yeast

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

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

Potato Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mash

  1. Peel the potatoes and cover them with water.

  2. Boil until done.

  3. Mash the potatoes in the pot.

  4. Cover the hops with water and boil for about 1 hour to extract the strength.

  5. Strain the hop water into the mashed potatoes.

Ferment

  1. Add the sugar, ginger, salt, and yeast. Mix well.

  2. Let the mixture rise for about 24 hours.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle the mixture, leaving some space at the top, and cork loosely.

  2. Store in a cool place; it will keep for several weeks.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Potato + gingertop 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. Hops + gingertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Potato + sugartop 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, and body to the finished brew.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the brew.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, driving fermentation and producing carbonation and alcohol.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that makes the brew fizzy.

The step that matters

Bottle loosely and leave space at the top. Fermentation keeps releasing carbon dioxide. Leaving headspace and corking loosely lets gas escape, so sealed bottles do not build dangerous pressure and burst.

Swap the potato

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

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