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Hop Yeast

A yeast-based dough flavored with hops, ginger, salt, sugar, and potatoes, which rises and is stored in fruit jars.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and potato 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 Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hop water

  1. Place the hops in a thin muslin bag and add to a kettle with the potatoes.

  2. Cook until the potatoes are soft enough to mash.

  3. Reserve 1 quart of the hop water.

Make the batter

  1. Scald 1 pint of flour with the reserved hop water.

  2. Add the mashed potatoes to the flour and beat until smooth.

  3. Mix in the ginger, salt, sugar, and 1 pint of water.

  4. When cool enough, add 1 cup of yeast. Beat well.

Rise and store

  1. Keep in a warm place to rise.

  2. Once light, stir down and let rise again.

  3. Stir and set in a cooler place.

  4. The next day, stir again.

  5. Transfer to fruit jars.

  6. Keep in a cool place.

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. Ginger + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together992 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ginger and sugar 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

Hops
Provide bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the yeast mixture.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, and feed the yeast as a source of sugars.
Flour
Forms the thick base that the yeast ferments and rises through.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing gas that makes the mixture rise.
Sugar
Provides food for the yeast, speeding fermentation and adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Add the yeast when cool enough. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cool enough before adding it. Too hot and the yeast will not rise the batter.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, ginger, sugar, flour. 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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