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Hop Yeast

A yeast made by boiling hops in water, mixing with flour and salt, and fermenting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Hops and flour work together. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry eugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓

Hop Yeast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the hop tea

  1. Boil the hops in a cheesecloth bag in 2 quarts of water for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the bag.

Make the starter

  1. Pour the boiling tea slowly over 1 pint of white flour mixed with 1 tablespoon of salt to avoid lumps.

  2. If lumpy, strain the mixture.

  3. When lukewarm, add 1 cup of liquid yeast or 1 cake of compressed yeast.

  4. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

Store

  1. Once light, transfer to glass cans.

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

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 that flavour the liquid and help preserve the starter.
White flour
Forms the body of the starter, giving it structure as the mixture thickens.
Liquid yeast or compressed yeast
Ferments the sugars in the mixture, producing gas that makes the starter rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling tea slowly over the flour. Pouring slowly while stirring helps each part of the flour wet evenly, which prevents lumps. Adding the yeast only when the mixture is lukewarm matters because very hot liquid kills yeast cells.

“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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