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Drink

Hop Yeast

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

  1. Pare the potatoes and place them in a saucepan with boiling water to cover, then boil the potatoes for 30 minutes.

  2. In another saucepan, add the hops to 3 pints of cold water and cover, then boil the hops gently until the potatoes are done.

Make the wort

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

  2. Once the potatoes are cooked, pour off the water and mash them until smooth.

  3. Strain the hop water through a fine sieve over the mashed potatoes and stir well.

  4. Add the flour, salt, and sugar mixture, and mix thoroughly.

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

Ferment and bottle

  1. When the mixture is blood-warm, add the yeast, cover tightly, and set it in a warm place to rise for 5 hours.

  2. Once risen, transfer to a stone jug or bottles, cork tightly, and 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
Provide starch and body that gives the brew its substance once mashed.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the brew.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and food for the yeast to ferment into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that make the beer lively.
Flour
Adds extra starch and body to the mixture, feeding the fermentation.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast at blood-warm temperature. Yeast works best at moderate warmth. If the mixture is too hot, the yeast can be killed; if it is too cold, fermentation is slow and weak. Checking that it feels blood-warm helps the yeast start active fermentation.

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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