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Hop Yeast

A yeast starter made from boiled potatoes, flour, sugar, and compressed yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes and boil them in a kettle.

  2. Once cooked, drain and mash the potatoes until smooth.

  3. Add the sugar and thin the mixture with water until it resembles thick cream.

Strain and ferment

  1. Place a colander over a jar that has been freshly scalded and strain the mixture into the jar.

  2. When it is warm, add the yeast.

  3. Let it sit undisturbed in a moderately warm place for 10 to 12 hours, depending on the weather.

  4. Once ready, keep the yeast cold.

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).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Provide starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
Flour
Adds starch and structure, thickening the starter as it ferments.
Sugar
Gives the yeast readily available food, speeding fermentation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the dough rise.

The step that matters

Letting the starter ferment at the right warmth. Yeast works best in a moderately warm place. If it is too cold, fermentation stalls, and if it is too hot, the yeast can be killed or the starter can sour. Checking the timing against the weather helps the starter become active.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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