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Drink

Hop Yeast

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel the potatoes.

  2. Place the peeled potatoes in a saucepan with boiling water to cover.

  3. Boil the potatoes for 30 minutes.

  4. Add the hops to 3 pints of cold water, cover, and boil gently until the potatoes are done.

  5. Drain the water from the cooked potatoes.

  6. Mash the potatoes until smooth.

  7. Strain the hop water through a fine sieve onto the mashed potatoes.

  8. Stir the mixture well.

Make the hop yeast

  1. Mix the salt, sugar, and sifted flour together.

  2. Add the flour, salt, and sugar mixture to the mash.

  3. Mix thoroughly.

  4. Strain the mixture through a colander into a stone jar.

  5. When the mixture is blood-warm, add the yeast.

  6. Cover the jar tightly.

  7. Set the jar in a warm place to rise for 5 hours.

Bottle and store

  1. Once risen, transfer the liquid to a stone jug or bottles.

  2. Cork the containers tightly.

  3. Store 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. Sugar + flourtop 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
Their starch, once mashed, provides body and food for the yeast to grow on.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mash, producing carbon dioxide and alcohol that make the liquid lively.
Sugar
Provides readily fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and drives fermentation.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma to the liquid and help preserve it.
Flour
Adds starch and body to the mash, giving the yeast more material to work on.

The step that matters

Add the yeast only when the mixture is blood-warm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mash must be cool enough not to harm it, yet warm enough to become active and start fermenting.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, hops, 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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