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Hop Yeast

A yeast made by boiling hops in water and mixing with flour, mashed potatoes, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. In a crock, combine the flour, mashed potatoes, sugar, and salt.

  2. Boil the hops in the water for 20 minutes, then strain while still boiling into the crock.

  3. Mix the ingredients until smooth and let cool.

Ferment and store

  1. Add the yeast, let it rise, and then stir it down.

  2. Cover and store in a cool place. It will keep for several weeks.

  3. Save 1 cupful each time to make new yeast.

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. Flour + potatotop 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. Flour + hopstop 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

Hops
Provide bitterness and aroma, and help preserve the yeast starter.
Potatoes
Supply starch that feeds the yeast and gives the starter body.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars and starches, producing gas that makes the starter rise.
Flour
Provides starch and structure for the starter to hold the rising yeast.

The step that matters

Add the yeast, let it rise, and then stir it down. The mixture must be cool enough that heat does not kill the yeast when it is added. Once it has risen, stirring it down releases excess gas so the starter ferments evenly.

Swap the potato

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

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

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