Why it works: Potato and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 30% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓
Hop Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the hop liquid
Put hops and salt into a bowl and pour the boiling water over them.
Make the potato mixture
Peel and grate the potatoes, then strain the liquid over the grated potatoes and add sugar.
Heat the mixture on the stove for a few minutes to thicken.
Add yeast and rise
When warm, stir in the yeast, cover, and place in a warm area to rise.
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.
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Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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Hops + sugartop 43% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Potatoes
- Starch that breaks down into sugars for the yeast to feed on, and thickens the mixture when heated.
- Yeast
- Live culture that ferments the sugars and produces gas, making the mixture rise.
- Sugar
- Food for the yeast, speeding fermentation and adding sweetness.
- Hops
- Adds bitter and aromatic flavour and helps preserve the liquid.
The step that matters
Add the yeast only when the mixture is warm. Yeast is killed by excessive heat, so it should be stirred in once the mixture has cooled to warm. Adding it too hot can stop fermentation before the mixture rises.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, sugar):
- Mustardfits better
- Cucumberfits about as well
- Capsicumfits about as well
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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