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Drink

Hop Yeast

A fermented beverage made from potatoes, hops, flour, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 potato mash

  1. Boil the potatoes and hops in 2 quarts of cold water until the potatoes are soft.

  2. Drain the potatoes, returning the hops and water to the heat.

  3. Rub the potatoes through a colander into a bowl.

  4. While hot, mix in 4 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of sugar, adding boiling hop-tea as needed.

Ferment and store

  1. Let the mixture cool to blood-warm before adding the yeast.

  2. Transfer to a wide-mouthed jar to ferment in a moderately warm place.

  3. Once bubbles cease, bottle tightly or seal in jars and store in the refrigerator or cold cellar.

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).

  4. Hops + flourtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Potato + hopstop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Potatoes
Provide starch and body that the yeast ferments into the drink.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma to the hop tea used in the mixture.
Flour
Adds starch and thickens the mash so it can carry the yeast.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, driving fermentation and bubbling.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing carbonation and flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool to blood-warm before adding the yeast.. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so adding it too early can stop fermentation. Blood-warm is cool enough to keep the yeast alive while still warm enough to activate it.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against hops, 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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