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Drink

Soft Yeast

A fermented potato beverage made with 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 ↓

Soft Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes, then boil them in 2 quarts of water with the hops in a tied bag.

  2. Once the potatoes are soft, remove them and mash them finely.

  3. Pour the boiling water over the mashed potatoes, adding a little extra water if needed.

  4. While hot, stir in 4 tablespoons of flour and 2 tablespoons of sugar.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Let the mixture cool, then add yeast.

  2. Allow the mixture to stand until very light, about 5-6 hours in summer and longer in winter.

  3. Once risen, bottle the mixture and store in a cool place, avoiding freezing.

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 that the yeast can ferment, and body to the liquid once mashed.
Flour
Adds starch and body to the mixture, giving the yeast more material to work on.
Sugar
Gives the yeast an easily fermented food source, driving the fermentation and rising.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into carbonation and alcohol, causing the mixture to rise and turn lively.
Hops
Add bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the potatoes and sugar.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture cool before adding yeast. Yeast is killed or weakened by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool enough before the yeast goes in to ensure it can ferment properly.

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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