Why it works: Sugar and flour 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 ↓
Home-made Yeast
Ingredients
Directions
Make the hop tea
Combine water, potatoes, and hops tied in muslin in a clean pot.
Boil until potatoes break apart, about 30 minutes.
Remove potatoes, leaving water and hops to boil slowly.
Make the yeast
Mash potatoes in a bowl.
Mix in sugar until well combined.
Wet the mixture with 3 tablespoons of boiling hop tea.
Stir in 1 tablespoon of flour.
Repeat this process four times.
Gradually add the remaining hop tea, squeezing the bag to extract all liquid.
Discard the hops.
Wash the muslin for future use.
Strain the mixture through a colander into a bowl.
Let it cool slightly.
Stir in the yeast.
Cover the bowl with a sieve or mosquito netting.
Let it sit undisturbed to ferment for 4-7 hours, depending on the season.
Store
Once fermentation is complete, pour the yeast into jars with tight covers.
Store in a cool place.
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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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
-
Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,355 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Potato + sugartop 30% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
-
Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together10 recipes
Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).
-
Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3 recipes
Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
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 act as a natural preservative in the liquid.
- Potatoes
- Supply starch that feeds the yeast and gives the mixture body.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars and starch to leaven the mixture and produce the active culture.
- White sugar
- Provides quick food for the yeast to start fermentation.
- Flour
- Adds additional starch for the yeast to feed on and thickens the mixture.
The step that matters
Let it cool slightly before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool enough to be comfortable to the touch before the yeast is stirred in.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (hops, sugar, flour):
- Mustardfits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Parsnipfits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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